Suggestion to increase the challenge and the number of lfm

[deconedi]

A simple proposal to perhaps increase the number of lfm??: The mythical difficulty

- create a difficulty above ee (the mythical), who knows how in the models of the ancient epic difficulty;
- The mythical quests could only be done with full party (not counting hirelings);
- Incentives as a lot of xp and considerable drop rate;
- Remove the death penalty for xp amount;
- Permit a higher rate of drop of mythical items.

Well, it's a suggestion. (difficulty: heroic: casual, normal, hard, elite; epic: casual, normal, hard , elite; mythical)

Obs.: may not significantly increase the number of lfm??, but may serve as an alternative for end game.

[janave]

It is not really connected to difficulty why people do not Pick Up Group, not grouping is also a preference of how to play DDO (maybe with the expection of raids). I see a lot of people in public instances yet i never see them in my groups, i see mostly returning names and after a few months its mostly "the known bunch" at least until a massive TR cycle where the top crop refreshes.

I think if they add this so called mythic difficulty with more xp, no bb, no penalties, and higher static drops,etc.. it should be both for heroic and epics. Since it would be more likely a flat scaling in all cases, it would increase the replay value of some older content ... for some time that is.

1way to figure out why so few people use lfm is to:
Make a big thread and send a mail to ddo players to participate?, let them fill a 2minute survery what would make them create or join parties on the lfm.

Here 1 situation i would not consider PUGging (even tho i pug most of the time), a very unpopular but otherwise quick to complete quest solo lets say 10mins, if it takes another 15min to fill, 5 to wait for people to gather, and more people add considerable risk to complete = I will not want to group for this specific quest, unless i do not care about a completion.

[8rad]

More mobs and bosses with more HP, higher saves and higher DC's in the same content everyone already knows front to back will only serve to further separate the best from the rest.

This will make the problem worse not better. And how would they integrate this into an already broken BB sytem?

This is two separate issues. Group participation and end game. They will both require very different solutions.

End game will be content driven and group participation will require a community driven solution.

[Monkey-Boy]

To get more LFMs you need more players. That's an entirely different issue from end-gamers being bored with little to do.

[JOTMON]

Mythic level content would be interesting..
Expand the story line and have Erandis Vol go around to all the previous house raids (except shroud) enticing the help of all the old defeated bosses as she tries to unlock her own Mark of Death.
Thus adding a Mythic level raid for all pre-existing Eberron Epic raids.

Mythic Von
Mythic Titan
Mythic DQ
Mythic MA/LOB
Mythic VOD
Mythic Hound
Mythic Chronosphere
Mythic TOD
Mythic Tempest Spine
Mythic FoT

after using all the raids as a flagging mechanism to bring it all back around for a final fight against Erandis Vol in a Mythic Litany raid after realizing she was just using you to entrap the souls of all these previous bosses to help her unlock her Mark.
Shards obtained from each of these Mythic raids unlock the final fight against Erandis Vol.. you now realize these boss shards were parts of her scattered philactary.
You now have what you need to defeat her or have you just brought her what she needs to free herself...

Lots of interesting upgrades of Epic loot to Mythic levels... existing templates are already in place for the Epic loot..
opens up opportunities to bring all these Epic goodies up to Mythic endgame standards with augment slots and still retain the Epic level content as it currently exists.

[Holybird]

Mythic level content would be interesting..
Expand the story line and have Erandis Vol go around to all the previous house raids (except shroud) enticing the help of all the old defeated bosses as she tries to unlock her own Mark of Death.
Thus adding a Mythic level raid for all pre-existing Eberron Epic raids.

Mythic Von
Mythic Titan
Mythic DQ
Mythic MA/LOB
Mythic VOD
Mythic Hound
Mythic Chronosphere
Mythic TOD
Mythic Tempest Spine
Mythic FoT

after using all the raids as a flagging mechanism to bring it all back around for a final fight against Erandis Vol in a Mythic Litany raid after realizing she was just using you to entrap the souls of all these previous bosses to help her unlock her Mark.
Shards obtained from each of these Mythic raids unlock the final fight against Erandis Vol.. you now realize these boss shards were parts of her scattered philactary.
You now have what you need to defeat her or have you just brought her what she needs to free herself...

Lots of interesting upgrades of Epic loot to Mythic levels... existing templates are already in place for the Epic loot..
opens up opportunities to bring all these Epic goodies up to Mythic endgame standards with augment slots and still retain the Epic level content as it currently exists.

I'm not even mad, but this idea is amazing.

[cdemeritt]

This again.... while a higher difficulty is warranted at this point, It will not help grouping, and it might even hurt it.

The plain and simple reason I don't group 90% of the time is that I don't want to deal with people. period. I deal with idiots day in day out at work, and DDO is my time away from people. Some Pugs are great, others not so much. recently due to trying to get my caster to 5000 favor, I did need to join a couple EE raids, and some harder to solo quests. This reminded me full well why I don't like to group. from the Guy (not the party leader) Screaming into his mic because people weren't do what "he" thought they should be doing, to waiting for an hr or more to get a needed raid, just to get repeated tells from a person saying they'd join if we did a higher difficulty inspite of the fact 8 of the people who joined were expecting the Listed Difficulty, to people just plain not being fun to be around.

Years ago, I was part of a couple large guilds. Sometimes this was fun, but there was the inevitable infighting between psudo-friends, and it always lead to grief.

In short, even if there was a mythic difficulty, I would find a way to solo it too. any attempt to force me to group beyond what I want to group will fail, or force me out of the game. considering how many threads are asking for server mergers, I don't think the game can afford to force people away. The best way to encourage grouping is something Turbine can't control, and only the players can, which is improve your own attitude. If I group, I remember the yellers, and avoid them, If I have a good time, I remember them too, and will me more likely to join a group they are in again (even if it is not often).

Also, one other problem with grouping, just because a quest is "Epic/Mythic" Doesn't mean I want to run it any more than I want to run the Heroic Version. I love GH, and sort of enjoy Epic GH. I dislike 3BC and hate Necro 4... I don't care that they now have Epic settings, I still dislike 3BC and Hate Necro 4.


I might be alone in this, but I don't think so.

[Forzah]

To get more LFMs you need more players. That's an entirely different issue from end-gamers being bored with little to do.

True, but getting more players at this point is unrealistic. So the best option is to trigger the existing player base to make more LFMs by rewarding making LFMs.

[Jeromio]

Give +5/10/15/20% xp bonus for casual/normal/hard/elite with full group at quest completion, and you probably have a solution for getting a drastic increase in number of LFMs.

Personally, I think heroic and epic elite difficulties are enough as it is.

[Inoukchuk]

A simple proposal to perhaps increase the number of lfm??: The mythical difficulty

- create a difficulty above ee (the mythical), who knows how in the models of the ancient epic difficulty;
- The mythical quests could only be done with full party (not counting hirelings);
- Incentives as a lot of xp and considerable drop rate;
- Remove the death penalty for xp amount;
- Permit a higher rate of drop of mythical items.

Well, it's a suggestion. (difficulty: heroic: casual, normal, hard, elite; epic: casual, normal, hard , elite; mythical)

Obs.: may not significantly increase the number of lfm??, but may serve as an alternative for end game.

I think the real way to increase LFM is one that would cause a bunch of people to quit, so pick your poison. The real way to do it is to put in content that requires role based teamwork (crowd control + DPS + tanking + healing + maybe trapping) and make this content provide rewards that are good enough to drive people to play it. I know the BYOH crowd will cry foul and scream about how awful the holy trinity is, but the reality is people don't pug because they don't need to. They can instead solo, shortman, and run in guild or channel exclusively with no care whatsoever for filling roles because everyone is high DPS and self sufficient. You can't fix people running in guild and channel, but you can provide content (doesn't have to be amazing hard for a balanced team) that forces or strongly encourages role based teamwork and has slightly superior rewards and high repeatability factor (like shroud had/has). Do this and you'll see a resurgence in LFMs.

[JOTMON]

True, but getting more players at this point is unrealistic. So the best option is to trigger the existing player base to make more LFMs by rewarding making LFMs.

DDO has not helped themselves with players using LFM's

No bonus or incentive for using LFMs to fill parties.
Dungeon Scaling.. makes it easier to not fill groups.
Pets/Hirelings gives opportunities fill needed voids without resorting to LFM's
We no longer have the .. need to get...player xxx.. to get the most out of the quest.. can just your barely useful hireling.
See more zerg to end level players then go back and zerg out favor/loot instead of earning it at level.. Shrouds I see now are all Elite with levels x-28.
Raid bypass timers allow for rinse repeat grinding instead of running other content/alts until off timer.



Player knowledge/wisdom/experience learned in the game has decreased (in my opinion)
.. access to XP pots/XP stones/Vetern Status.. gives opportunities to level without running as much content.
..less stepping stone experience and gear as they level past low content to higher content.
..players following cookie cutter builds laid out for them in forums instead of learning for themselves.

[Monkey-Boy]

True, but getting more players at this point is unrealistic. So the best option is to trigger the existing player base to make more LFMs by rewarding making LFMs.

if players would stop being so horrible more people would put up LFMs.

[BigErkyKid]

Want more groups?

The easiest initial fix is to remove dungeon scaling. It is such that in quests where you don't need to run too much solo (wizking would not be that...) it is strictly better to solo to get it done. Particularly if you don't know the people well.

[janave]

Want more groups?

The easiest initial fix is to remove dungeon scaling. It is such that in quests where you don't need to run too much solo (wizking would not be that...) it is strictly better to solo to get it done. Particularly if you don't know the people well.

Lots of people exlusively duo/solo in static groups, if due to scaling it was not feasible any longer, most of them would find new entertainment (the easy way) rather than adapting to a playstyle that is more demanding/less attractive/etc.. for them,

[IronClan]

Want more groups?

Get people to come back and play DDO again, release MOTU and Epic Destinies for free, and make a new chunk of content all the way from low level to end game, F2P. Look at the historical login graph about 2 months after MOTU and ED's were released... A very large chunk of core players went away instead of buying MOTU, and the big spike caused by the expansion didn't last. The net result was a loss of players.

The only way they're going to pump new life into DDO is using the same radical outside the box thinking they used when they decided to go F2P the first time. There are many F2P MMO's that make ALL AREAS free.

[cdemeritt]

Want more groups?

The easiest initial fix is to remove dungeon scaling. It is such that in quests where you don't need to run too much solo (wizking would not be that...) it is strictly better to solo to get it done. Particularly if you don't know the people well.

I was soloing long before there was scaling, and quite frankly I wish I could opt out. Scaling is taking much of the sense of accomplishment outta the quests... and I'd still solo without it again.

However, removing scaling at this point would drive more people away than it would get to group. A soloist or static duel runner would still run solo or in their duel groups or as others said, find something else to do.

[BDog77]

BB only comes into play with a full group of 6 players.

[cdemeritt]

Want more groups?

Get people to come back and play DDO again, release MOTU and Epic Destinies for free, and make a new chunk of content all the way from low level to end game, F2P. Look at the historical login graph about 2 months after MOTU and ED's were released... A very large chunk of core players went away instead of buying MOTU, and the big spike caused by the expansion didn't last. The net result was a loss of players.

The only way they're going to pump new life into DDO is using the same radical outside the box thinking they used when they decided to go F2P the first time. There are many F2P MMO's that make ALL AREAS free.

I agree, It has been years, and they should move a bunch of stuff to the F2P category. Some less popular chains, some popular chains... I think all quests below level 8 (10?) should be F2P, and select chains from above 10 as well. I think ED's should stay as a P2P, but definitely more F2P in the Forgotten Realms.

[Failedlegend]

oops wrong thread

[8rad]

BB only comes into play with a full group of 6 players.

Now thats a great idea!

[Grosbeak07]

Want more groups?

Get people to come back and play DDO again, release MOTU and Epic Destinies for free, and make a new chunk of content all the way from low level to end game, F2P. Look at the historical login graph about 2 months after MOTU and ED's were released... A very large chunk of core players went away instead of buying MOTU, and the big spike caused by the expansion didn't last. The net result was a loss of players.

The only way they're going to pump new life into DDO is using the same radical outside the box thinking they used when they decided to go F2P the first time. There are many F2P MMO's that make ALL AREAS free.


I agree with this.

Content is the biggest hook for players in this game. The devs at times seem to forget this, but they should be FEATURING it!

I'm not opposed to them charging for new content, after all they need to recoup their development costs, but after 12 months or so, it should be discounted to very cheap or simply made f2p. 2 years after content comes out, few people are going to "buy" it if they haven't already. Also think about this, players who have been absent (say since MOTU) would come back to find a whole bunch of content suddenly available to them.

Then the DDO team can crank out more classes and races as well as Enhancement tree's and ED's, people will buy that stuff more than quest packs in my opinion, simply because they will get more use of classes/races/ED's/Enhancements etc. then content.

It has been suggested before, but holding "Welcome Back Weekends" where people can play as VIP for a couple of days, along with a loot and xp bonus could help to get people hooked again.

Simply making a harder difficulty won't solve the LFM problems. At this point only the community can solve this problem and it seems that too many of us (myself included I don't pug, but I should) are unwilling to do it, as long as we have our guilds, friends and chat channels.

[Grosbeak07]

BB only comes into play with a full group of 6 players.

I like this idea.

6 human players that is. Not 2 players with 2 hirelings each :)

[BigErkyKid]

Lots of people exlusively duo/solo in static groups, if due to scaling it was not feasible any longer, most of them would find new entertainment (the easy way) rather than adapting to a playstyle that is more demanding/less attractive/etc.. for them,

Well, this reasoning is a bit...

Scaling makes people solo because it is simpler than grouping. People start getting use to soloing. Now if you remove scaling you just diminish the playerbase.

The problem I see is that DDO has been alienating the playerbase that comes for a deeper group experience. Now of course the ones left are more OK with soloing. But to be honest that is not what I come to do in MMOs, just something I've been slowly forced to do.

I see this trend towards DPS only quests and soloing as something bad.

[Amundir]

The question is are you going to incentivise LFMs vs groups? At what point do you differentiate?

I can see LFMs being low due to three main reasons:
People who like to solo.
People who group with guildmates or static groups.
People who don't like grouping for whatever reason (ex. bad history with conflicting personalities or play styles)

I personally don't really think there is much you can do to increase LFMs. Anything you do would also affect guild grouping and still not increase LFMs, IMO. And promoting LFMs over groups formed from any other fashion is just a bad idea.

[Monkey-Boy]

Want more groups?

Get people to come back and play DDO again, release MOTU and Epic Destinies for free, and make a new chunk of content all the way from low level to end game, F2P. Look at the historical login graph about 2 months after MOTU and ED's were released... A very large chunk of core players went away instead of buying MOTU, and the big spike caused by the expansion didn't last. The net result was a loss of players.


This.

Players ARE content. if there's more people there is more going on.

[Grosbeak07]

This.

Players ARE content. if there's more people there is more going on.

As others have pointed out, you could fill the servers to capacity with players, doesn't mean they will play or even interact with each other.

[Algreg]

You either enjoy teaming up or not. If you want to force people to team up, content will just be rejected. We have EE now and browsing this forum I have the impression there are enough people around not being able to beat that solo.

D&D has a low playerbase. Its system allows teams only in a very narrow level range. Mechanics like BB further narrow teaming choices. Adding a new tier of difficulty will change nothing, nothing at all. You will still have:

a) vacated lfm windows
b) very experienced and skilled vets who will figure out an efficient way to beat content and get the shinies it offers.
c) people complaining about not being good enough to get those shinies, promoting their everyone is special stance.
d) people claiming latest tier of difficulty is not challenging, demanding a new one.
e) people calling better players elitists and demanding of them to do community service for new and bad players.

and this will happen with every iteration of a new difficulty tier. Waste of time and ressources.

[phillymiket]

Removing the Death Penalty is one thing that would increase LFMs right away.

I think many vets would show less established characters around, they just don't want to pay for it.

Other things mentioned here - I'm not a fan of making BB only for a full party.

The reason being that this would actually drive people away from the game by forcing them against their desires to group or take a huge hit to XP. (what if someone drops? DCs? Griefing?)

Nor am I a fan of removing Dungeon Scaling. This would make it so only the vets can solo without great difficulty and actually increase the divide between the top players and new folks.

Both these changes would force you to wait for a full party or suffer. No one likes to wait for a party to fill.

So a new player would download the game, try to solo something, go <DING>, be forced to join or start a LFM, and wait for eternity, before just uninstalling the game.

Such a change has the potential to be a planet killer.

Punishment in a game to force social interaction is not the way to go.

Incentive to group is the way to go.

+1% XP for each player (not hireling) in party up to +5% for a full party.

+2% Guild Renown for each player in party up to a bonus of +10%

Bonus drops for things like ingots, token frags, tapestry shards, platinum, etc, in end chests based on the size of the party.

Slighty higher drop rates for Named Items and Phlogs, etc for a full six (or 12) players.

+1 loot on the loot table if you have a full party of six or twelve.

PuGing out 2 or 3 spots will still cost vets a bit of time and maybe frustration, depending on personalities involved, but if the reward is 5% xp, 10% renown, moar loots and a tiny increase in drops then I could see some change happening without all the bad feelings and existential risk to the game.

Incentives such as these could be easily added to the game tomorrow with almost no cost to Turbine in coding.

They could be tested first with a "PuG weekend" event to make sure they have an effect before committing to permanency.

You could even have players earn a special creature companion, or whatever, the first weekend by creating, or joining, LFMs and completing the quest to get the event going. (though that would cost dev time).

TL : DR

Carrots not Sticks

[janave]

New player event:
3 days

Every new account gets x1 on the 1st character they create
* some pet
* select +1 ability tome
* 1/day no mlvl haste clickie
* some cure pots
* unique cosmetic clothing

If players with new account logs in for the next 20 days gets 4-5 free <10lvl adventure packs.
After 30 days login they get 2-3 packs in the 10-14 range
After 40 days they get a coupon 40% off any of the 2 expansion packs

the idea is to activate the rewards for actually logging in and playing.

[Failedlegend]

I don't think adding another difficulty is the answer I mean DDO already has FOUR difficulties ait's just that the devs imo areunder-utilizing that...currently Elite is the standard go to difficulty even in Epic for most players which in turn basically makes Normal hard and Casual basically a waste of space a little re-adjusting and rebranding would be far more effective imo

I'll try to explain what I mean...Currently the diffs sort of look like this


Current Diffs:

Casual: Laughable
Normal: Good for new players and less than optimal builds
Hard: Kinda pointless...most quests barely notice a diff from Normal
Elite: Beatable by anyone with decent amount of skill and gear

Personally I play on Elite with my static groups and most PuGs, Hard when Soloing and Normal with my non-gamer friend who just likes the pretty dungeons,etc. or if I'm playing a really stupid build.



I'd like to see the difficulties look more like this.

Normal: New players/Testing New abilities/Practicing Soloing/Playing unsupported builds (ie. A Summoner)
Hard: New players should find this a fair challenge for a balanced party and moderately skilled soloists will find this difficulty appealing
Paragon: This is what most non-new balanced parties will be playing but soloing should only be for the best (multi-TR, high skill, well built, well geared))
Elite: ONLY the crem de la crem can handle this basically a whole team of that hard mode soloist. NO ONE should be able to solo this.


Scaling would still exist on Normal/Hard but none should exist in Paragon/Elite. (feel free to suggest different names for "Paragon"...we can even call Elite "Mythical" if you want)

I'd also like to say that imo the Bravery Bonus mechanic is a huge detriment to the game and needs to be replaced with a less exclusionary bonus such as granting bonus XP for each party member in the quest (ie. 3% for each extra party member for a total of 15% xp boost with a full group) than on top of that change the "no deaths" bonus so it is a self-only boost (IOW if your ally dies your bonus is unaffected) these changes reward people for pugging/partying in a group instead of punishing them.

Other than that I'd definitely say we need some randomness worked into the game...I know true random placement of traps or chests would likely take WAY too much dev time but adding random effects to existing traps similar to the potions of wonder or those black orbs would shake things up nicely(stat damage, neg levels,DoTs, Blind, Slow,etc.).

Beyond that as I've said above I'd like to see more enemies that require more thought than "optimal HP reduction" (ie. Can only be damaged from behind)

Lastly I'd also like to see some more Will and Fortitude based effects, even in traps. A Fear trap would be pretty deadly...especially with nearby Lava. (Shallow lava so it's not instant death)

[RedOrm]

A slightly silly, slightly serious suggestion: the newb bonus.
For each player that *hasn't* completed quest X yet, get a 10% XP bonus. This would cancel any death penalty, and if you keep the new player alive, would actually improve your xp. Both would make it more interesting (to some folks anyway) to have new players in the group, exposing the newbs (and some not-so-newbs!) to grouping, and presumably both increase the number of LFMs and make them more newb-friendly.

Possible tweaks:
15% for a first lifer, 10% for 2nd, 5% for 3rd and up (yes there are multi-TRs that *haven't* done all the quests in the game yet, so don't want to exclude them).
Partyleader/hires don't count (so no soloing or using hires)
Party must gather at the end (no parking peeps at the entrance)

Obviously there would still be people who simply don't WANT to group, but hey, they can keep playing as they do now, this would not change anything for them.

Greetz,
Red Orm

[PsychoBlonde]

A simple proposal to perhaps increase the number of lfm??: The mythical difficulty

- create a difficulty above ee (the mythical), who knows how in the models of the ancient epic difficulty;

The "ancient" epic difficulty was boring and awful. Yeah, let's bring back the days when the mobs were 100% immune to all CC and instant-kill and trash mobs hit so hard that you could not stand in melee with them even on a pure tank build, so the "quest" consisted of standing in a safe spot for an hour and a half while the wizard threw one firewall after another and their "skill" consisted of "willingness to buy SP pots on the DDO store". And you'd have to do exactly the same thing once a day for six straight months to make one item.

Of course, you could go for the more "middle" epic difficulty when they got rid of the instant-kill immunity which consisted of everyone who wasn't playing a Pale Master or Hold Monster bot begging to be carried through the epics they needed in order to gear out their melee character that was basically useless except for dpsing raid bosses so that the casters didn't have to drink 30 pots.

Let's go back to the days of waiting around for 2 hours to get a healer so you could do a couple of quests--if they deigned to stick around that long. Oh, and you'd better bring a stack of SP pots to bribe them with.

Let's go back to the time of getting universally and instantly booted from a group if you had sub-par HP because the party leader knew you'd get one-shot by the first group of trash mobs.

I look forward to every lfm saying "know it" and "link your weapons" again.

No. Thank. You.

[arcane_nite]

Pets/Hirelings gives opportunities fill needed voids without resorting to LFM's
We no longer have the .. need to get...player xxx.. to get the most out of the quest.. can just your barely useful hireling.
See more zerg to end level players then go back and zerg out favor/loot instead of earning it at level.. Shrouds I see now are all Elite with levels x-28.
Raid bypass timers allow for rinse repeat grinding instead of running other content/alts until off timer.


^this help kill the game

[Qhualor]

If the difficulties were updated as the game changed, improvements to mob AI, loot wasn't either clearly better on elite or loot dropped on all difficulties and more variety of quests like old skool DDO, than high HP mobs wouldn't exist with blanket immunities, power creep would be much slower at progression, there would be a lot less players soloing/shortmanning/IP creating more incentives to group via lfm or guild, balance would only need tweaking, there wouldn't be much talk to create new difficulties for the uber geared/multi completionist/highly skilled or much talk to ask for improved challenge and players would be sticking to difficulties that suit them better.

The game has changed too much to go back to the old "forced" grouping. Instead, the best way is to balance everything out the best you can and incentivise grouping. One way to do it is fix BB. It is one of the bigger problems.

[arcane_nite]

Removing the Death Penalty is one thing that would increase LFMs right away.

I think many vets would show less established characters around, they just don't want to pay for it.

Other things mentioned here - I'm not a fan of making BB only for a full party.

The reason being that this would actually drive people away from the game by forcing them against their desires to group or take a huge hit to XP. (what if someone drops? DCs? Griefing?)

Nor am I a fan of removing Dungeon Scaling. This would make it so only the vets can solo without great difficulty and actually increase the divide between the top players and new folks.

Both these changes would force you to wait for a full party or suffer. No one likes to wait for a party to fill.

So a new player would download the game, try to solo something, go <DING>, be forced to join or start a LFM, and wait for eternity, before just uninstalling the game.

Such a change has the potential to be a planet killer.

Punishment in a game to force social interaction is not the way to go.

Incentive to group is the way to go.

+1% XP for each player (not hireling) in party up to +5% for a full party.

+2% Guild Renown for each player in party up to a bonus of +10%

Bonus drops for things like ingots, token frags, tapestry shards, platinum, etc, in end chests based on the size of the party.

Slighty higher drop rates for Named Items and Phlogs, etc for a full six (or 12) players.

+1 loot on the loot table if you have a full party of six or twelve.

PuGing out 2 or 3 spots will still cost vets a bit of time and maybe frustration, depending on personalities involved, but if the reward is 5% xp, 10% renown, moar loots and a tiny increase in drops then I could see some change happening without all the bad feelings and existential risk to the game.

Incentives such as these could be easily added to the game tomorrow with almost no cost to Turbine in coding.

They could be tested first with a "PuG weekend" event to make sure they have an effect before committing to permanency.

You could even have players earn a special creature companion, or whatever, the first weekend by creating, or joining, LFMs and completing the quest to get the event going. (though that would cost dev time).

TL : DR

Carrots not Sticks


This is a excellent idea.

[Ralmeth]

Personally, I think a big reason for the decline in groups is that the developers are spreading us out in what content any one particular person wants to run at any one time. How many times have you looked at the LFM panel and thought to yourself...
1) Already ran that one in the saga.
2) Already got my BB for that one.
3) Already ran that one.
3) I'm not in the right level range.
4) That's not the difficulty I want to run.
5) Etc.

Don't get me wrong, I like the fact that there's an incentive to run a wide assortment of quests instead of being bored going after the best XP/min quests over and over, and I also like getting the bonus rewards from sagas, so I'm not recommending that this changes, but this is just an observation.

I think the simplest solution to get more people grouping without changing any existing systems in place would be to simply add a grouping bonus to provide an incentive to group up. If it was me, I would make this a 10% XP bonus if there are 3 or more people in a group without anyone having a late entry penalty. Just my 2CP.

[Qhualor]

Personally, I think a big reason for the decline in groups is that the developers are spreading us out in what content any one particular person wants to run at any one time. How many times have you looked at the LFM panel and thought to yourself...
1) Already ran that one in the saga.
2) Already got my BB for that one.
3) Already ran that one.
3) I'm not in the right level range.
4) That's not the difficulty I want to run.
5) Etc.

Don't get me wrong, I like the fact that there's an incentive to run a wide assortment of quests instead of being bored going after the best XP/min quests over and over, and I also like getting the bonus rewards from sagas, so I'm not recommending that this changes, but this is just an observation.

I think the simplest solution to get more people grouping without changing any existing systems in place would be to simply add a grouping bonus to provide an incentive to group up. If it was me, I would make this a 10% XP bonus if there are 3 or more people in a group without anyone having a late entry penalty. Just my 2CP.

That's exactly what I go through myself and what's often said here too.

Only thing I disagree with is adding more xp for grouping. I think we already have plenty ways to get xp.

[Inoukchuk]

I agree that BB is a problem. I also agree that the bigger problem is the death penalty, and compounds with BB (who wants to run elite for BB with a bunch of newbs that will cost them 10% for death?). I say get rid of death penalty entirely and instead of breaking streak dropping you to zero change it to decrement 1 (cap at 5, no decrementing down from 150). I'd go a step further and give a 5% per party member xp bonus (beyond the first) on all quests.

I also still say adding some quests with good loot, replayability, and incentives to group would help. It doesn't "force" everyone into grouping since it is quest based and not system based, and it caters to a currently ignored segment of the community (everyone that doesn't like BYOH).

As for quest difficulty, it'd be nice to see some solutions that didn't involve changing CR by +50 thereby increased saves, HP, and damage to huge amounts. Higher difficulties should use better AI/tactics, have more dodge, displacement, fortification, fort bypass, viable AC, etc.

[Grosbeak07]

That's exactly what I go through myself and what's often said here too.

Only thing I disagree with is adding more xp for grouping. I think we already have plenty ways to get xp.


Then lets remove other sources of xp to make this more attractive. Remove BB and replace it with a static 10% bonus with 3 players, 15% with 4, 20% with 5 and 25% with 6. You could then bump it up to 50% for full 12 raid group, helping to remedy something raids generally lack, xp.

[IronClan]

As others have pointed out, you could fill the servers to capacity with players, doesn't mean they will play or even interact with each other.

The people who contend that DDO's problem is solo'ing, guild grouping etc. are simply and very obviously wrong. It's not even a stance that's worthy of refuting any more... Seriously don't take the lack of disagreement as tacit approval... most of us are just rolling our eyes and moving on.

Anyone can see what happens when a new update is published and the LFM panel and login activity swells, everyone knows people who go away between updates, this idea that DDO has a secret 100,000 strong player base that only solo's and somehow DOES NOT SHOW UP IN THE LOGIN ACTIVITY is so patently ludicrous that most of us just ignore the people who keep wishfully suggesting it.

DDO's problem is that it doesn't have enough people playing it, at the same time that they introduced Cap raises and BB mechanics that "thin out" the available groups at any given level range. this conspires to make the game look unhealthy, which by itself causes people to leave. Solo'ing doesn't help the equation, but it's not a big part of it either.

[Inoukchuk]

The people who contend that DDO's problem is solo'ing, guild grouping etc. are simply and very obviously wrong. It's not even a stance that's worthy of refuting any more... Seriously don't take the lack of disagreement as tacit approval... most of us are just rolling our eyes and moving on.

Anyone can see what happens when a new update is published and the LFM panel and login activity swells, everyone knows people who go away between updates, this idea that DDO has a secret 100,000 strong player base that only solo's and somehow DOES NOT SHOW UP IN THE LOGIN ACTIVITY is so patently ludicrous that most of us just ignore the people who keep wishfully suggesting it.

Except of course that we all also know dozens of people who DON'T PUG!!! They solo or run in guild or channel, because the downsides of pugging make it not worth their time. So... if we fix that it helps.

[sk3l3t0r]

Personally, I think a big reason for the decline in groups is that the developers are spreading us out in what content any one particular person wants to run at any one time. How many times have you looked at the LFM panel and thought to yourself...
1) Already ran that one in the saga.
2) Already got my BB for that one.
3) Already ran that one.
3) I'm not in the right level range.
4) That's not the difficulty I want to run.
5) Etc.

Don't get me wrong, I like the fact that there's an incentive to run a wide assortment of quests instead of being bored going after the best XP/min quests over and over, and I also like getting the bonus rewards from sagas, so I'm not recommending that this changes, but this is just an observation.

I think the simplest solution to get more people grouping without changing any existing systems in place would be to simply add a grouping bonus to provide an incentive to group up. If it was me, I would make this a 10% XP bonus if there are 3 or more people in a group without anyone having a late entry penalty. Just my 2CP.

When I log in, open the LFM panel I go through the same checklist almost every time...then i post my own LFM...and it fills not always 6 players, but at least 2-3 join...go figure?

I do get some occasions where I end up soloing that particular quest...but that's not a regular thing.

I log in, I check LFMs, nothing there I want to play or even empty for my level range..I post my own LFM and go IP. Within 5 minutes I will get at least one person join...most of the time it fills fast.

Thing is however, it's not unusual for me to post an LFM, it fills fast and then we end up in a static group for the next couple of hours.

IMO, it's all timing...some days I fill an LFM in 5 minutes and i don't post another for several hours...other days, I am posting an LFM almost every single quest and end up soloing most of the quests for the next 2-3 hours...it's hit or miss.

I can't comment on level 20+ content because I play mostly 1 - 20. That's where I like to play and can't really be bothered much with Epic levels. I keep 1 toon at 20+ for guild raiding, my other toon is on a constant HTR cycle.

What would be interesting to know is the people complaining about lack of LFMs are playing in what level ranges? I see lots of activity in the 1 - 20 range.

[Grosbeak07]

The people who contend that DDO's problem is solo'ing, guild grouping etc. are simply and very obviously wrong. It's not even a stance that's worthy of refuting any more... Seriously don't take the lack of disagreement as tacit approval... most of us are just rolling our eyes and moving on.

Anyone can see what happens when a new update is published and the LFM panel and login activity swells, everyone knows people who go away between updates, this idea that DDO has a secret 100,000 strong player base that only solo's and somehow DOES NOT SHOW UP IN THE LOGIN ACTIVITY is so patently ludicrous that most of us just ignore the people who keep wishfully suggesting it.

There are 2 major problems with DDO's population, which constantly spawns discussions like this. One is real the other is perception.

The real problem is that DDO is losing players. It does not take much to prove this. Your chances if getting new players into the game is poor, even a community effort to do Turbines job and promote the game would not get enough to replace those who are leaving. I do think DDO could make a better effort to woo and attract lapsed players. Make them remember why they liked the game in the first place (before they remember why they left!).

The perceived problem is that players think their servers (other than wayfinder) are empty. There are more players than you might think, they just need a slight push or encouragement to play with other players.

So encouraging grouping does not solve one problem but would help with another and benefit the game.

[Ralmeth]

That's exactly what I go through myself and what's often said here too.

Only thing I disagree with is adding more xp for grouping. I think we already have plenty ways to get xp.

That's a good point regarding the fact that there is already enough XP in the game...Perhaps it would make sense to reduce XP elsewhere to compensate?....Perhaps remove the death penalty, then this would kill two birds with one stone as there would then be one less reason for someone to not form a group, for fear of some newb dying.

[Monkey-Boy]

Except of course that we all also know dozens of people who DON'T PUG!!! They solo or run in guild or channel, because the downsides of pugging make it not worth their time. So... if we fix that it helps.

You're gonna magically make pugs not terrible players?

[Qhualor]

There are 2 major problems with DDO's population, which constantly spawns discussions like this. One is real the other is perception.

The real problem is that DDO is losing players. It does not take much to prove this. Your chances if getting new players into the game is poor, even a community effort to do Turbines job and promote the game would not get enough to replace those who are leaving. I do think DDO could make a better effort to woo and attract lapsed players. Make them remember why they liked the game in the first place (before they remember why they left!).

The perceived problem is that players think their servers (other than wayfinder) are empty. There are more players than you might think, they just need a slight push or encouragement to play with other players.

So encouraging grouping does not solve one problem but would help with another and benefit the game.

To go deeper into the problem, I've noticed just by looking at the Oracle that new players aren't being retained well it would seem. When the default server is switched, there is a decline. As has often been said, the lfm is not new player friendly when people are running the same quests again and again, elite BB, know it, IP, be self sufficient etc. There is not much "all welcome", "new player friendly", hard/norm lfms or willing to teach type of lfms. I think any fixes need to begin there.

[Inoukchuk]

You're gonna magically make pugs not terrible players?

IMO the main reason pugs are terrible players is that the good players have all abandoned them. Give them a reason to come back and pug groups will improve. Personally, I don't pug. I know my reasons why, and I have some idea of what might attract me back. Currently I have no incentive beyond "I kind of miss pugging sometimes". Back in the day I used to meet plenty of really good players pugging. You did too probably, now you call them guild or channel members, but you probably met most of them in a PUG at some point.

[Gremmlynn]

Well, this reasoning is a bit...

Scaling makes people solo because it is simpler than grouping. People start getting use to soloing. Now if you remove scaling you just diminish the playerbase.

The problem I see is that DDO has been alienating the playerbase that comes for a deeper group experience. Now of course the ones left are more OK with soloing. But to be honest that is not what I come to do in MMOs, just something I've been slowly forced to do.

I see this trend towards DPS only quests and soloing as something bad.I have never really seen this deeper group experience in pugging in any game. Much less in DDO where the mechanics lend themselves to so many different ways to play.

Static groups, sure. But pugs generally consist of players playing more against each other, than with.

[BigErkyKid]

I have never really seen this deeper group experience in pugging in any game. Much less in DDO where the mechanics lend themselves to so many different ways to play.

Static groups, sure. But pugs generally consist of players playing more against each other, than with.

I have, often, in RTS titles.

And the lack of of group experience is something encouraged by the mechanics we have in place.

Whether this was the only direction the game could take to survive or not is another debate.

But personally I dislike it a lot. I do solo a lot too, unfortunately.

[Gremmlynn]

Except of course that we all also know dozens of people who DON'T PUG!!! They solo or run in guild or channel, because the downsides of pugging make it not worth their time. So... if we fix that it helps.The problem is that playing with unknown players who are as likely as not to detract from one's own entertainment simply is less fun. How do you fix that?

This game simply isn't built to be pug friendly. It doesn't have the limited play options or static roles to cause players to act in predictable manners. Nor the sort of demi-content to play while forming groups and getting to know each other before getting into the real content.

Pug friendliness is a big reason most MMOs do have those things.

[Gremmlynn]

I have, often, in RTS titles.

And the lack of of group experience is something encouraged by the mechanics we have in place.

Whether this was the only direction the game could take to survive or not is another debate.

But personally I dislike it a lot. I do solo a lot too, unfortunately.DDO isn't anything like an RTS game though.

The thing that discourages pugging in DDO, beyond simply soloing in a group for more efficiency, is the amount of freedom we have in how we play the game that makes it more likely with each additional group member that a group of random players will get in the way of each others fun rather than add to it.

[Inoukchuk]

The problem is that playing with unknown players who are as likely as not to detract from one's own entertainment simply is less fun. How do you fix that?

This game simply isn't built to be pug friendly. It doesn't have the limited play options or static roles to cause players to act in predictable manners. Nor the sort of demi-content to play while forming groups and getting to know each other before getting into the real content.

Pug friendliness is a big reason most MMOs do have those things.

That's all well and good, but at some point we all did it and we all enjoyed it. Sure, we ran into a few boneheads and that was less fun, but we also met all the great people we run with today. So we know it's possible in the DDO environment, so we have to examine what changed and what improvements can be made to offset whatever has destroyed pugging. I think my suggestions are at least a good place to look first. Remove any disincentive to PUG (which we currently have with death penalty + BB + scaling) and add or turn those into incentives. I realize you've probably come to like your current pattern and don't want it disrupted by *god forbid* making the optimal progression in the game involve grouping/pugging but.... I think it would be a good thing, just as the OP seems to. Or at least add enough incentive to revitalize the LFM panel and make it a valid option for those who would want to PUG sometimes if PUGs were readily available.

[BigErkyKid]

DDO isn't anything like an RTS game though.

The thing that discourages pugging in DDO, beyond simply soloing in a group for more efficiency, is the amount of freedom we have in how we play the game that makes it more likely with each additional group member that a group of random players will get in the way of each others fun rather than add to it.

That's by design. Kiting its here by design for instance. Would have been simpler to have much slower pew pewing so that actual roles existed.

You cannot design the whole gameplay solo style and expect people to work well together.

As a caster, I always prefered soloing because I could organize the mobs in groups to blow them up. As a melee, it is annoying to chase mobs that are being kited. And so on.

[Oxarhamar]

That's by design. Kiting its here by design for instance. Would have been simpler to have much slower pew pewing so that actual roles existed.

You cannot design the whole gameplay solo style and expect people to work well together.

As a caster, I always prefered soloing because I could organize the mobs in groups to blow them up. As a melee, it is annoying to chase mobs that are being kited. And so on.

Sorry mate, that is not by design.

That is a consiquence of players who do not know how to player to each others strengths and weaknesses which is more likely in pugs than running with friends, guildies, channel, or static groups.

Melee, Ranged, & Casters absolutely can complement each other in organized team play to crush the content much more efficiently than solo even with scaling.

BUT, your not going to get that type of play in pugs (at least not often).

[Neomarica]

When I log in, open the LFM panel I go through the same checklist almost every time...then i post my own LFM...and it fills not always 6 players, but at least 2-3 join...go figure?

I do get some occasions where I end up soloing that particular quest...but that's not a regular thing.

I log in, I check LFMs, nothing there I want to play or even empty for my level range..I post my own LFM and go IP. Within 5 minutes I will get at least one person join...most of the time it fills fast.

Thing is however, it's not unusual for me to post an LFM, it fills fast and then we end up in a static group for the next couple of hours.

IMO, it's all timing...some days I fill an LFM in 5 minutes and i don't post another for several hours...other days, I am posting an LFM almost every single quest and end up soloing most of the quests for the next 2-3 hours...it's hit or miss.

I can't comment on level 20+ content because I play mostly 1 - 20. That's where I like to play and can't really be bothered much with Epic levels. I keep 1 toon at 20+ for guild raiding, my other toon is on a constant HTR cycle.

What would be interesting to know is the people complaining about lack of LFMs are playing in what level ranges? I see lots of activity in the 1 - 20 range.

In my experience, it's mid-to-high level heroics where finding groups can become more difficult - for instance, I haven't managed to fill/find a single group for Stealer of Souls in the time it took for me to get from level 18 to 21 - after I hit 22, I believe I saw ONE LFM for it. On casual. And you can just forget about trying to get a PUG for at level Shroud or at all for Subterrane raids.

There are groups for those levels, of course - usually at least one - but trying to find people to run a specific quest with you can be hard. In Epics it's significantly easier, because for most people it doesn't matter(much) if you're level 21 or level 28, except for the high-level epic quests.

[Forzah]

The problem is that playing with unknown players who are as likely as not to detract from one's own entertainment simply is less fun. How do you fix that?

This game simply isn't built to be pug friendly. It doesn't have the limited play options or static roles to cause players to act in predictable manners. Nor the sort of demi-content to play while forming groups and getting to know each other before getting into the real content.

Pug friendliness is a big reason most MMOs do have those things.

If you provide a high enough reward, for most people it makes up for having to play with bad players, so this does not seem like a major problem to me. There may be a select few that still cannot cope with bad players, but that's their problem then.

[Gempoult]

Give +5/10/15/20% xp bonus for casual/normal/hard/elite with full group at quest completion, and you probably have a solution for getting a drastic increase in number of LFMs.

Personally, I think heroic and epic elite difficulties are enough as it is.

This. But 20% is not enough, make it 10/20/30/40% or even better 20/40/60/80% only to apply if there are 6 people in the group, not counting hirelings, counting any DCed ones and LFM panel will overflow :)

[Singular]

if players would stop being so horrible more people would put up LFMs.

Yeah! We all have to stop being bad people and post more LFMs, man! Peace and love, that's the way we should kill monsters together.

[BigErkyKid]

This. But 20% is not enough, make it 10/20/30/40% or even better 20/40/60/80% only to apply if there are 6 people in the group, not counting hirelings, counting any DCed ones and LFM panel will overflow :)

Careful with multiboxing.

Besides, the issue is deeper than the number of lfms. Rather, than even in groups it is like many lads soloing the instance together.

[Gempoult]

Careful with multiboxing.

Besides, the issue is deeper than the number of lfms. Rather, than even in groups it is like many lads soloing the instance together.

You seriously think somebody is gonna bring 5 more "clones" to get the exp? :) No such players left in DDO. The bonuses would apply only in a full group (6 or 12 people) not for every other player that joins ;) I see it as a win-win-win-to infinity lol players that don't like to group for any reason will still get the exact same amount of exp, no nerfs or forcing to group, and on a slow morning when you can't get 5 more people fast enough it will be still better/faster to solo 3 quests while waiting to fill... It won't bring more people in DDO but definitely will make the current ones play together (and maybe, just maybe, check the LFM panel once in a while - 90% of my guildies don't know such thing even exists) Oh, yeah, and there will be more drama for people who like that lol

[phillymiket]

Stealer of Souls... at level Shroud... Subterrane raids

The thing is, the needs of the vet =/= the needs of the new person.

I'm really, really not going to farm those silly gems for SoS and I don't have the space to hold them in my TR cache.
There is no real reason for me to run an at-level shroud. Been there done that...for years in fact.
The Sub offers nothing for me at this point.

Get rid of the silly old flag mechanics designed to make it harder to run these groups and update all loot in all old quests.

There are friends and guildies, etc, that a vet runs unneeded quests for already.

You can't expect people to run quests and post LFMs for some unknown, random new person's theoretical benefit.

Build it and they will come.

[Oxarhamar]

Careful with multiboxing.

Besides, the issue is deeper than the number of lfms. Rather, than even in groups it is like many lads soloing the instance together.

1) Unless said multi boxer is using multiple computers the lag from running 6 instances of DDO at once is going to be unforgiving unless they have some serious Hardwear.

2) Dungeon scaling will make it so that soloing with 5 pikers will make the method super inefficient. every time you see a glory glory I soloed EE whatever just remeber Soloing is the easiest scaled difficulty even on EE. soloing with a full group is not.

3) already addressed your multi soloer running in group but, again make some friends, guild, channel, static players that learn to play off each others strengths and weaknesses become much more of a cohesive unit than a random mashup of puggers.

[Oxarhamar]

The thing is, the needs of the vet =/= the needs of the new person.

I'm really, really not going to farm those silly gems for SoS and I don't have the space to hold them in my TR cache.
There is no real reason for me to run an at-level shroud. Been there done that...for years in fact.
The Sub offers nothing for me at this point.

Get rid of the silly old flag mechanics designed to make it harder to run these groups and update all loot in all old quests.

There are friends and guildies, etc, that a vet runs unneeded quests for already.

You can't expect people to run quests and post LFMs for some unknown, random new person's theoretical benefit.

Build it and they will come.


Yep many Vets have run those long ago.

then in SOS case TRed losing flagging. How many bothered to reflag since that stuff is so outdated now?

[Gremmlynn]

That's by design. Kiting its here by design for instance. Would have been simpler to have much slower pew pewing so that actual roles existed.

You cannot design the whole gameplay solo style and expect people to work well together.

As a caster, I always prefered soloing because I could organize the mobs in groups to blow them up. As a melee, it is annoying to chase mobs that are being kited. And so on.Which is exactly what makes the game rather unfriendly to pug. Why choose to be annoyed by other players when even soloing is a better option?

[Gremmlynn]

If you provide a high enough reward, for most people it makes up for having to play with bad players, so this does not seem like a major problem to me. There may be a select few that still cannot cope with bad players, but that's their problem then.Who said anything about bad players. Hell, "bad" players are actually generally the easiest to play with as they don't tend to be able to monopolize the game play.

What kind of reward is worth taking the fun out of the game? For me it would start around $15/hour and a benefits package. If I'm going to work for them I expect to be paid a reasonable wage.

[BigErkyKid]

Which is exactly what makes the game rather unfriendly to pug. Why choose to be annoyed by other players when even soloing is a better option?

Because soloing should have never been the "better option", even with PUGs as long as they are moderately competent.

Blitz was a major pain in that sense, but many others remain. From shurikannons insisting on lining up their mobs to casters annoyed with people "dispersing" the mobs, to melees that want to charge blitz but cannot land hits when they start it because people obliterate the group of mobs.

It is not that crucial in the sense that nowadays PUGs mostly complete, but it makes for a worse experience and sometimes (some tough EEs) it is better to solo.

[phillymiket]

Who said anything about bad players. Hell, "bad" players are actually generally the easiest to play with as they don't tend to be able to monopolize the game play

Well that's the thing.

Everyone wants something different and there is a huge gap between what some can do and what others can do.

Most everyone is going to play to the best of their ability.

On the one hand people want vets to put up LFMs, but on the other hand other people don't want that same vet to do what they are capable of doing.

On the one hand people want groups to fill, on the other hand people don't want someone less capable then the average in party.

Many new players have one set of goals which are more short-term and involve exploring quests and doing optionals.

Many older players have more long-term goals that involve massive amounts of XP to get the past lives they want that inspire a much faster play-style.

Nothing will change this short of giving away PLs and gear like Monty Hall.

Removing barriers like death penalties and giving incentivves to add LFMs will help, but nothing with make the party system in DDO work for all people all the time.

[Erdrique]

Give +5/10/15/20% xp bonus for casual/normal/hard/elite with full group at quest completion, and you probably have a solution for getting a drastic increase in number of LFMs.

Personally, I think heroic and epic elite difficulties are enough as it is.

I occur with something like this. There is just seems to be more incentive to solo as opposed to grouping, especially at the lower levels with people running through their heroic past lives.

[Gremmlynn]

Because soloing should have never been the "better option", even with PUGs as long as they are moderately competent.

Blitz was a major pain in that sense, but many others remain. From shurikannons insisting on lining up their mobs to casters annoyed with people "dispersing" the mobs, to melees that want to charge blitz but cannot land hits when they start it because people obliterate the group of mobs.

It is not that crucial in the sense that nowadays PUGs mostly complete, but it makes for a worse experience and sometimes (some tough EEs) it is better to solo.That's the game we have.

Or are you suggesting that the game itself should be fundamentally changed in order to make it more pug friendly? Because, as it currently is, the game doesn't lend itself to being played in groups of random players due to the number of incompatible play styles supported by it.

[Qhualor]

I occur with something like this. There is just seems to be more incentive to solo as opposed to grouping, especially at the lower levels with people running through their heroic past lives.

My incentive to solo is because I have the knowledge and the power to do so. I like to play one and done and try to maximize my xp in each and every quest. You can't find too many players willing to do that. I can now solo no problem to level 17 skipping quests here and there along the way partly because I can bank 2 1/2 to 4 ranks most of the time and partly because the quests I skip are not popular enough having to wait usually a long time just to get one or two other players.

If it wasn't because of that it would be more incentive to post lfms.

[Gremmlynn]

Well that's the thing.

Everyone wants something different and there is a huge gap between what some can do and what others can do.

Most everyone is going to play to the best of their ability.

On the one hand people want vets to put up LFMs, but on the other hand other people don't want that same vet to do what they are capable of doing.

On the one hand people want groups to fill, on the other hand people don't want someone less capable then the average in party.

Many new players have one set of goals which are more short-term and involve exploring quests and doing optionals.

Many older players have more long-term goals that involve massive amounts of XP to get the past lives they want that inspire a much faster play-style.

Nothing will change this short of giving away PLs and gear like Monty Hall.

Removing barriers like death penalties and giving incentivves to add LFMs will help, but nothing with make the party system in DDO work for all people all the time.It's more; on one hand people want groups to fill, on the other they don't want people to play a different basic style. Frankly, I would rather solo a melee than play with a ranged kiter, an insta-killer, a gather and blaster, or even a good CCer. As any of those basically will take over the game and anything I do manage to do will likely annoy them as much as they are annoying me.

[BigErkyKid]

That's the game we have.

Or are you suggesting that the game itself should be fundamentally changed in order to make it more pug friendly? Because, as it currently is, the game doesn't lend itself to being played in groups of random players due to the number of incompatible play styles supported by it.

Yes, I think the game should change.

It started by brute force requiring people to perform certain roles and it has ended up with providing somehow incompatible gameplay styles.

One of the reasons why I play a MMO to be part of a team of humans that engage in meaningful strategies to defeat content. DDO is not offering that.

In advance I say that despite not being perfect I still prefer DDO to the other MMOs out there.

[Gremmlynn]

Yes, I think the game should change.

It started by brute force requiring people to perform certain roles and it has ended up with providing somehow incompatible gameplay styles.

One of the reasons why I play a MMO to be part of a team of humans that engage in meaningful strategies to defeat content. DDO is not offering that.

In advance I say that despite not being perfect I still prefer DDO to the other MMOs out there.What reasonable changes do you think should be made to do this? Remember that in the case of DDO, due to it's age and small staff, reasonable also means cheap and easy.

Personally, I don't think the game is really set up to survive this sort of change due to it's quest centric nature, even if we consider unreasonable solutions.

[Chai]

What reasonable changes do you think should be made to do this? Remember that in the case of DDO, due to it's age and small staff, reasonable also means cheap and easy.

Personally, I don't think the game is really set up to survive this sort of change due to it's quest centric nature, even if we consider unreasonable solutions.

The difficulty settings should be what they say they are. They started off saying elite would not scale, but then it was made to (whether intended or not, it does scale).

This is another one of my suggestions which bravery bonus (the way it is set up now) stands in the way of. If it was set up as a first time play bonus separate from daily play through bonus, then the difficulty system can be made to cater to group minded and solo minded players alike.

The idea here is it is not a sliding scale where catering more to groupers caters less to soloers. No need to take away from one playstyle to make it more fun for another.

[BigErkyKid]

What reasonable changes do you think should be made to do this? Remember that in the case of DDO, due to it's age and small staff, reasonable also means cheap and easy.

Personally, I don't think the game is really set up to survive this sort of change due to it's quest centric nature, even if we consider unreasonable solutions.

How would I know?

I think they should understand this is an issue (as I think they did with blitz) and move forward in that direction.

The problem is that the ways I can think of often involve nerfing. As long as toons can be at their best alone how on earth do ou make them better in groups? It needs to be that they are at their best in groups, meaning you need to cripple them.

I'll say it: nerf kiting. Then you open the door for group cooperation.

[Gremmlynn]

The difficulty settings should be what they say they are. They started off saying elite would not scale, but then it was made to (whether intended or not, it does scale).

This is another one of my suggestions which bravery bonus (the way it is set up now) stands in the way of. If it was set up as a first time play bonus separate from daily play through bonus, then the difficulty system can be made to cater to group minded and solo minded players alike.

The idea here is it is not a sliding scale where catering more to groupers caters less to soloers. No need to take away from one playstyle to make it more fun for another.I like those ideas, but don't think they will fix puging when grouping itself can detract from the enjoyment of the game.

[Gremmlynn]

How would I know?

I think they should understand this is an issue (as I think they did with blitz) and move forward in that direction.

The problem is that the ways I can think of often involve nerfing. As long as toons can be at their best alone how on earth do ou make them better in groups? It needs to be that they are at their best in groups, meaning you need to cripple them.

I'll say it: nerf kiting. Then you open the door for group cooperation.I've been saying that for a while. As well as nerfing AOE effects due to the friendly fire disabled nature of the game. Nerf CC somewhat to make it crowd control, not lambs to the slaughter mode, getting rid of the helpless bonus would be a good start, adding extra saves on damage another (I was reading some of my old AD&D books recently, did you know that Blade Barrier completely prevented the caster from moving back then?). Nerf insta kill to be more of a crit, or low save roll effect with damage replacing it in other cases. Get rid of work arounds for built in limitations, add the glass back to the cannon and such.

With that, expand on wilderness areas, but change them to xp on kill with bigger spawns proximity code to limit how far away one can be to get that xp. This gives us a useful way to gather and get to know each other a bit before tackling an actual quest.

[Inoukchuk]

How would I know?

I think they should understand this is an issue (as I think they did with blitz) and move forward in that direction.

The problem is that the ways I can think of often involve nerfing. As long as toons can be at their best alone how on earth do ou make them better in groups? It needs to be that they are at their best in groups, meaning you need to cripple them.

I'll say it: nerf kiting. Then you open the door for group cooperation.

Is kiting really the problem? I get the impression that most of the solo beatdowns these days are zerg stomps by melee toons. I think a better argument would be "stop making BYOH so dang easy". But apart from all that I don't think we have to make soloing less easy, we just need to give comparable incentive to run in groups. Better XP is always an incentive if the difference is sufficient.

I still like the 5% per party member over the first. If someone wants to dual box and take scaling for 5%, let 'em. 25% for a full party is pretty good, and 20% for "almost full" is also pretty good, good enough you don't have to wait for group to fill to get your 40% all or nothing bonus. I could even see something like 8%, and reduce first time completion bonuses by half to compensate (BB+first time is so huge that there is little incentive to run anything a second time and therefor less incentive to group). And get rid of death penalty, it just makes people scared to take a chance of getting even one bad party member in a group.

So currently, to many people getting a group means taking longer to complete and getting -10% xp. The changes I proposed above would change the last part to be +25%xp (or up to 40% possibly) instead of -10%. So unless getting a group together increases you per quest time by more than 25% it's a win, even if half the group dies every run. I think this would encourage a lot of the more social vets to group again.

[BigErkyKid]

I've been saying that for a while. As well as nerfing AOE effects due to the friendly fire disabled nature of the game. Nerf CC somewhat to make it crowd control, not lambs to the slaughter mode, getting rid of the helpless bonus would be a good start, adding extra saves on damage another (I was reading some of my old AD&D books recently, did you know that Blade Barrier completely prevented the caster from moving back then?). Nerf insta kill to be more of a crit, or low save roll effect with damage replacing it in other cases. Get rid of work arounds for built in limitations, add the glass back to the cannon and such.

With that, expand on wilderness areas, but change them to xp on kill with bigger spawns proximity code to limit how far away one can be to get that xp. This gives us a useful way to gather and get to know each other a bit before tackling an actual quest.

Well, CC works so well due to the stupidity of AI. They all crowd together and chase you, giving you an excellent position to mass hold them, blast them with AOE or use precise shot on them.

Right now instakilling isn't that powerful altogether, its massive DPS what's king.

I do like the wilderness idea, I think XP grinding should have never happened in quests. Quests are meant to be meaningful instances we play for the dungeon crawl, not just annoying things in the way of our XP. Random spawns of mobs in the currently wasted wilderness seems to me like a way better place to get XP.

To me, the key issue is kiting and as you say glass cannons having been removed from the game.

[Inoukchuk]

Well, CC works so well due to the stupidity of AI. They all crowd together and chase you, giving you an excellent position to mass hold them, blast them with AOE or use precise shot on them.

Right now instakilling isn't that powerful altogether, its massive DPS what's king.

I do like the wilderness idea, I think XP grinding should have never happened in quests. Quests are meant to be meaningful instances we play for the dungeon crawl, not just annoying things in the way of our XP. Random spawns of mobs in the currently wasted wilderness seems to me like a way better place to get XP.

To me, the key issue is kiting and as you say glass cannons having been removed from the game.

So we're clear on terminology here....

Kiting is running from mobs pinging them to death with ranged damage (arrows, DoTs, whatever). Is that really what you're talking about? Because I don't know a single person that kites in this game. Or are you referring to corralling a bunch of mobs and nuking energy bursting or cleaving them to death (mass AoE).

[BigErkyKid]

So we're clear on terminology here....

Kiting is running from mobs pinging them to death with ranged damage (arrows, DoTs, whatever). Is that really what you're talking about? Because I don't know a single person that kites in this game. Or are you referring to corralling a bunch of mobs and nuking energy bursting or cleaving them to death (mass AoE).

As the game gets easier, facerolling is more of an options. But a few months ago kiting WAS the way most people played.

Anyway, you want to give more xp for having more bodies in a quest. I am for free XP, but that won't solve my problems.

[Oxarhamar]

As the game gets easier, facerolling is more of an options. But a few months ago kiting WAS the way most people played.

Anyway, you want to give more xp for having more bodies in a quest. I am for free XP, but that won't solve my problems.

Have to agree as a full time repeater I've been saying there has been no reason to kite in most instances even on EE if you can get mobs targeted from a reasonable distance they die long before ever getting within melee range.

Maybe in off destiny or solo Vs. Some Bloated HP boss or mini boss.

Otherwise yeah there has been no need to Kite trash on a well geared high DPS ranged build since MOTU.



Hey, One can even deception Tank many Bosses by keeping thier Agro with thier back faced away from them the majority of the time while just self healing through whatever damage is deal when they do turn To face the player (this works for Ranged and Melee if built to do so).

[Angelic-council]

I like this thread very much, something like this involves deep thinking.

I strongly believe it's all about: the content, game mechanism and the people. -
- to really understand this, I guess we have to ask everyone what they don't like, and what makes them leave this game.. very interesting :)

[soloist12]

If you want to inspire grouping, you'll need combinations of the following:

- Quest actions requiring more than 2 people, such as von5
- Rewards for it, such as enabling/disabling bonuses at certain group sizes
- Nerfing abilities characters can use that nullify entire classes, such as healing while doing insane damage
- Make the entire game world free to everyone and sell your cosmetics/consumables

Unfortunately, duping has had a huge effect up to this point on things as well, such as reducing the content people need to run to acquire things, to driving off players disgusted with it.

Sometimes I wish they would fix the dupe bugs and come out with a brand new server or 2 that can't be transferred to - that would be an awesome way to bring new and old players back to grouping (along with free access to all content).

[Gremmlynn]

So we're clear on terminology here....

Kiting is running from mobs pinging them to death with ranged damage (arrows, DoTs, whatever). Is that really what you're talking about? Because I don't know a single person that kites in this game. Or are you referring to corralling a bunch of mobs and nuking energy bursting or cleaving them to death (mass AoE).IMO both. Anytime you damage mobs while avoiding them via movement you are kiting. Likely a big reason most PVE games don't allow for the amount of movement DDO does is because their devs realize the AI can't handle it well.

[BigErkyKid]

IMO both. Anytime you damage mobs while avoiding them via movement you are kiting. Likely a big reason most PVE games don't allow for the amount of movement DDO does is because their devs realize the AI can't handle it well.

It does not work well in DDO either. As ranged characters have become increasingly powerful over time, this becomes more apparent.

A few posts ago you mentioned nerfing CC. Well they have already done that, big time, with epic wards.The problem in DDO regarding those abilities is no other than character progression and power creep.

No fail CC trivializes content. However, you want to reward people who have invested time in the game with character progression. Given the limitations of the D20 system this means that it soon reaches situations of either no fail or almost always fail. Same goes for instakilling. The key issue is the relative importance of bonuses wrt luck (the dice). The luck component has been greatly dimishined in DDO.

Now going back to kiting or movement avoidance, this has reached absolutely awful limits. One could see Sestra kiting his way to victory in raids, top quests and what not. Truth is that now we are so powerful wrt content that we don't even need that for most of the time. But while combat movement is fine, we should have never been made so much faster than mobs. The prevalence of "wings" just makes it worse. Obvious solutions are stamina systems and I suspect that the reason why they were not introduced in the past is because it is understood that they would cripple the capacity to solo.

A final issue that severely damages groups is the fact that for the most part we no longer have glass cannons AND quests requiring a very minimal set of abilities to be completed: DPS and self healing. Regarding glass cannons, we all know that with the new changes, this is more so that ever a reality. Everyone is now stacking PRR and the DPS of mobs is the same. Now the quests also just require DPS and self healing. Any toon packing those two abilities can complete the vast majority of content, hence why specialists have virtually disappeared.

[Oxarhamar]

It does not work well in DDO either. As ranged characters have become increasingly powerful over time, this becomes more apparent.

A few posts ago you mentioned nerfing CC. Well they have already done that, big time, with epic wards.The problem in DDO regarding those abilities is no other than character progression and power creep.

No fail CC trivializes content. However, you want to reward people who have invested time in the game with character progression. Given the limitations of the D20 system this means that it soon reaches situations of either no fail or almost always fail. Same goes for instakilling. The key issue is the relative importance of bonuses wrt luck (the dice). The luck component has been greatly dimishined in DDO.

Now going back to kiting or movement avoidance, this has reached absolutely awful limits. One could see Sestra kiting his way to victory in raids, top quests and what not. Truth is that now we are so powerful wrt content that we don't even need that for most of the time. But while combat movement is fine, we should have never been made so much faster than mobs. The prevalence of "wings" just makes it worse. Obvious solutions are stamina systems and I suspect that the reason why they were not introduced in the past is because it is understood that they would cripple the capacity to solo.

A final issue that severely damages groups is the fact that for the most part we no longer have glass cannons AND quests requiring a very minimal set of abilities to be completed: DPS and self healing. Regarding glass cannons, we all know that with the new changes, this is more so that ever a reality. Everyone is now stacking PRR and the DPS of mobs is the same. Now the quests also just require DPS and self healing. Any toon packing those two abilities can complete the vast majority of content, hence why specialists have virtually disappeared.

You talk about these things as if they are the norm.

Let's see you solo a raid like Sestra then come back and we will talk.

Same old everyone is doing it the way YOU think they are, let's punish them and make them play the way YOU want Them to.

[Glascanon]

Here 1 situation i would not consider PUGging (even tho i pug most of the time), a very unpopular but otherwise quick to complete quest solo lets say 10mins, if it takes another 15min to fill, 5 to wait for people to gather, and more people add considerable risk to complete = I will not want to group for this specific quest, unless i do not care about a completion.

U broke down the problem. Its just way to easy to solo a quest. 'Thats why ppl dont party up. What we need to make grouping more interesting is make grouping necessary or at least worth it.
Instead of buffing a new class on every update on the top of the Overpowered list. We need some overall nerfs.

It should just not be possible to solo EE content. It should not be worth the time to solo EH instead of looking for a group to do it faster.

The ppl who realy like soloing quests can still do that on EN. They wont loose anything that way!

[apocaladle]

Just saying as a vet I don't generally run pugs because there is no reason to.

When I run with friends it gets done on heroic elite/epic elite at level fast, right no fuss no problems.

When I run a pug likely one or many people have never run it and are likely to be slow and cause various exp penalties like death or muckin up opts or on really bad occasions they can cause party wipes or quest failures

So why would I want to run a pug group when there is no incentive to do so and PLENTY of incantive to stick to my elite vet friends

Keep in mind I have nothing against new players and I think the community should be welcoming to them, I don't get mad at them when they screw up a quest I just can't be bothered to push them through the learning curve and the time it takes to do so.


Who ever came up with the idea to add loot+exp bonuses to full party's: props

if we could get 15-20%+ exp out of having pugs then that still gives us 5-10% over the death penalty and +1 loot bonus & +10% guild renown then it might be worth my time to push these guys through to get my exp/loot/renown and get more lfms up.

I am sure I am not the only one but it is just clearly better for me at the moment to avoid the lfms

[Oxarhamar]

U broke down the problem. Its just way to easy to solo a quest. 'Thats why ppl dont party up. What we need to make grouping more interesting is make grouping necessary or at least worth it.
Instead of buffing a new class on every update on the top of the Overpowered list. We need some overall nerfs.

It should just not be possible to solo EE content. It should not be worth the time to solo EH instead of looking for a group to do it faster.

The ppl who realy like soloing quests can still do that on EN. They wont loose anything that way!


Player who are generally capable of soloing EE who group with players capable of soloing EE complete even faster and easier than soloing.



For some reason you feel you need to punish those who play the game by excluding them from playing EE or even EH without a group.

When hours of playtime are not wasted waiting for a group to actually be available who all want to run the same quests then maybe I'd side with "full group for EE" until then NO.

Not waiting around doing EN until a group fills up. We run EE with LFM up taking all comers and are lucky if we get any never mind fill a party unless of course we fill with friends, and guildies.

Reward grouping! Not punish solo/short man.

[Vint]

I am sure I am not the only one but it is just clearly better for me at the moment to avoid the lfms

I agree with you, my friend. We all play to have fun and after 8 years I do not consider it fun to mentor or spend an hour in waterworks. I will solo or stay in channel just to be sure that my fun is not ruined by people that may prefer to go slower (or who need instructions).

I will also note that making the game so that EE cannot be soloed will not help the problem. If people do not want to group with puggers, they will walk away if they are forced to.

[bartharok]

I will also note that making the game so that EE cannot be soloed will not help the problem. If people do not want to group with puggers, they will walk away if they are forced to.

Argh! Making me agree with you is EVIL.

But its true, if somone doesnt want to PUG, noone can force him to do it. Or at least not for long.

[Uchuu]

Another point of view from someone who usually plays in a static two man group:
The only reason why we don't always have an open group (which means we in general never have an open group/lfm up) is the managing hassle. I don't mind a 10% xp hit if someone dies. We are slow anyway. I don't mind getting back and reviving someone.

What I primarily want to do, however, is play with a friend the way we want to do it. If someone joins along the way? I don't mind that at all. Maybe if we had some "open group" text that gets saved, allows for a longer explanation, maybe a checklist with quests that we will run next (for example Enter the kobold (finished) Monastary of the Scorpion (in progress) Prey on the Hunter (next) Stealer of Souls (next) - this way I won't have the arguments what quest to do next either) including difficulty. And some stuff saying how we are, well, a static group at the core, that we do most optionals (but skip some of the really rewardless ones) and that you can join and leave at any time. And that we like to take stupid risks that might wipe us. Quick to set up, and except the occasional revive or picking up a soulstone and saying "hi" I don't really have to bother with the people joining. But I can if they seem nice.

Another issue I have is that I actually like playing support classes, but in ddo they pretty much feel useless. So joining a group is something I do when I can't do it alone, not because I have fun playing as a team. Playing a healer in a raid where three people are undead, three others are warforged and will take almost no or no healing at all, while the last give can instantly heal themselves full feels incredible pointless. Not that I really want that to change. I can understand that most people like their solo ability (I do it as well), so that's probably the game DDO is. I don't really mind, but as it was mentioned, it doesn't help grouping.

[Angelic-council]

I agree with you, my friend. We all play to have fun and after 8 years I do not consider it fun to mentor or spend an hour in waterworks. I will solo or stay in channel just to be sure that my fun is not ruined by people that may prefer to go slower (or who need instructions).

I will also note that making the game so that EE cannot be soloed will not help the problem. If people do not want to group with puggers, they will walk away if they are forced to.

Yes, exactly.

Also, I agree with Vint about EE difficulty. If we truly want to increase the number of lfm, there has to be a lot of work put in.... that includes: content and the game mechanism change. One of the reason why people run together is because, it's fun. However, this is not always the case. Challenge is very important for any MMOs. How about in DDO, it's all about exp farming right now. Now.. I'm not suggesting to take away the entire TR system, but it could be limited in a good way. By that, I meant, we need an actual end game, and it's currently TR farming. Once you done that.. There is really nothing to do. Gear farming maybe. I think we need some seriously well designed quests, with good memorable lore. Most people just run ahead for exp and gear, but how about if you could choose the path? Not always straight forward. It could be a good start. Introduce something called infinite tower or something new. Weekly ranking perhaps. Once we reach the realm of "I'm the best", we pretty much expect the challenge and compete with other players.

[Gremmlynn]

It does not work well in DDO either. As ranged characters have become increasingly powerful over time, this becomes more apparent.

A few posts ago you mentioned nerfing CC. Well they have already done that, big time, with epic wards.The problem in DDO regarding those abilities is no other than character progression and power creep.

No fail CC trivializes content. However, you want to reward people who have invested time in the game with character progression. Given the limitations of the D20 system this means that it soon reaches situations of either no fail or almost always fail. Same goes for instakilling. The key issue is the relative importance of bonuses wrt luck (the dice). The luck component has been greatly dimishined in DDO.

Now going back to kiting or movement avoidance, this has reached absolutely awful limits. One could see Sestra kiting his way to victory in raids, top quests and what not. Truth is that now we are so powerful wrt content that we don't even need that for most of the time. But while combat movement is fine, we should have never been made so much faster than mobs. The prevalence of "wings" just makes it worse. Obvious solutions are stamina systems and I suspect that the reason why they were not introduced in the past is because it is understood that they would cripple the capacity to solo. I've seen how no or low fail CC can be made to work in other games. Mostly by making it crowd control, not crowd slaughter. In one game in particular, completely debilitating CC had relatively short duration, had no "helpless" type bonuses and didn't even lower defenses in any way, while also taking on a immunity to itself that lasted throughout it's duration and twice that duration after it wore off. While holds, longer in duration, just prevented movement and were broken by any damage. Making them mostly only useful mostly for controlling crowds, rather than slaughtering them unopposed.

As for kiting, a few simple changes could go a long way towards fixing that. Remove or reduce shot/cast on the run ability and make persistent AOEs break on caster movement, for instance. Then kiting becomes annoying enough to be avoided when possible.

[Chai]

Let's see you solo a raid like Sestra then come back and we will talk.

So that is the measuring stick of being able to acknowledge there is an issue? Being able to do what the .01% of players can do, and if the specific person you quoted cant do it, theres no issue?

No, we will talk about the issues now, regardless of whether or not a specific individual can solo an endgame raid. People being able to solo EE on more powerful characters which were not previously available a short time ago is more of a player retention thing than it is an accomplishment thing. If they were to make EE not soloable less people would be attracted to playing the game, because unfortunately, whether we agree with it or not, this has become the expectation over years of time. It would have been a good move to make E and EE not soloable as they originally intended (when it was claimed elite doesn't scale) but now after a few years of scaling being in place and people soloing E and EE, removing that would have a higher probability of causing fewer people to play DDO than it would revitializing the "challenge" those difficulties were implied to have. This has nothing to do with being able to solo an endgame raid however.

[Gremmlynn]

U broke down the problem. Its just way to easy to solo a quest. 'Thats why ppl dont party up. What we need to make grouping more interesting is make grouping necessary or at least worth it.
Instead of buffing a new class on every update on the top of the Overpowered list. We need some overall nerfs.

It should just not be possible to solo EE content. It should not be worth the time to solo EH instead of looking for a group to do it faster.

The ppl who realy like soloing quests can still do that on EN. They wont loose anything that way!I would only agree with this if the game offered something somewhat useful to do while waiting for those groups to form.

Even then, we still have the problem of all the incompatible play styles the games supports. When the party consists of a sneak assassin type, a run backwards kitter, a gather and blast zerging caster and a kill them as you come to them melee IMO they all would be better off soloing than destroying each others entertainment by grouping up. Then, depending on what those "overall nerfs" turn out to be, they may also need other players in roles best left to hirelings to even do that.

[Chai]

I would only agree with this if the game offered something somewhat useful to do while waiting for those groups to form.

Even then, we still have the problem of all the incompatible play styles the games supports. When the party consists of a sneak assassin type, a run backwards kitter, a gather and blast zerging caster and a kill them as you come to them melee IMO they all would be better off soloing than destroying each others entertainment by grouping up. Then, depending on what those "overall nerfs" turn out to be, they may also need other players in roles best left to hirelings to even do that.

Or the game would need forced cooperation - something it has moved away from requiring the past few years. Traps would need to be so horrible that not bringing a rogue would increase the probability of failure significantly. The damage taken would have to be to the point where healers would significantly decrease completion times, etc.....

[BigErkyKid]

I've seen how no or low fail CC can be made to work in other games. Mostly by making it crowd control, not crowd slaughter. In one game in particular, completely debilitating CC had relatively short duration, had no "helpless" type bonuses and didn't even lower defenses in any way, while also taking on a immunity to itself that lasted throughout it's duration and twice that duration after it wore off. While holds, longer in duration, just prevented movement and were broken by any damage. Making them mostly only useful mostly for controlling crowds, rather than slaughtering them unopposed.

As for kiting, a few simple changes could go a long way towards fixing that. Remove or reduce shot/cast on the run ability and make persistent AOEs break on caster movement, for instance. Then kiting becomes annoying enough to be avoided when possible.

You mean like bards? Fascinate would be the equivalent of what you said. But we are so powerful that CC is not really needed, and if you are to build for it it has to be quite powerful to be rewarding enough. It is a problem of power balance.

Now regarding your suggested fix for kiting. Cases:

1. IPlayers cannot kite and pew pew and are limited when soloing to either take hours (run, shoot, run again, shoot)
2. So powerful and resilient that kiting is not needed (they can't hit me hard to enough to endanger me anyway)

In 1. people would just not play those classes probably. We no longer believe in meaningful grouping. If it is not capable of soloing it is gimp.

In 2., kiting or no kiting does not matter, we just trivialized content.

It is the whole balance of the game that is messed up.

[Gremmlynn]

You mean like bards? Fascinate would be the equivalent of what you said. But we are so powerful that CC is not really needed, and if you are to build for it it has to be quite powerful to be rewarding enough. It is a problem of power balance.

Now regarding your suggested fix for kiting. Cases:

1. IPlayers cannot kite and pew pew and are limited when soloing to either take hours (run, shoot, run again, shoot)
2. So powerful and resilient that kiting is not needed (they can't hit me hard to enough to endanger me anyway)

In 1. people would just not play those classes probably. We no longer believe in meaningful grouping. If it is not capable of soloing it is gimp.

In 2., kiting or no kiting does not matter, we just trivialized content.

It is the whole balance of the game that is messed up.Fascinate actually lasts to long or is more effective then what I described. If fascinated mobs could cast a spell, pull out a bow, or simply attack those who came close enough with melee, it would be closer to what I described.

Though I do agree the rest of the game would need to also be nerfed to relatively the same level.

As for kiteing, I don't see it as a bad thing that people would stop making builds based on kiteing. It's basically just a meta-game tactic anyway, attacking an inherent weak spot in the AI code.

[Oxarhamar]

So that is the measuring stick of being able to acknowledge there is an issue? Being able to do what the .01% of players can do, and if the specific person you quoted cant do it, theres no issue?

No, we will talk about the issues now, regardless of whether or not a specific individual can solo an endgame raid. People being able to solo EE on more powerful characters which were not previously available a short time ago is more of a player retention thing than it is an accomplishment thing. If they were to make EE not soloable less people would be attracted to playing the game, because unfortunately, whether we agree with it or not, this has become the expectation over years of time. It would have been a good move to make E and EE not soloable as they originally intended (when it was claimed elite doesn't scale) but now after a few years of scaling being in place and people soloing E and EE, removing that would have a higher probability of causing fewer people to play DDO than it would revitializing the "challenge" those difficulties were implied to have. This has nothing to do with being able to solo an endgame raid however.

That's the measuring stick for the issue that the quoted player chose to represent as the norm.


I agree with your points. I believe punishing solo to force grouping will not solve the problem.

Now I do believe that rewarding grouping would promote grouping. Bonus XP, bonus Chests, quests that are complete able easier but grouping through multiple objectives being completed across a wider quest than the typing straight shot dungeons we get.

Just one example:

Outbreak for example forces the whole group to go to one locked door kill the infected and retrieve a key for the other door only to kill the second infected. If the group could split into 2 groups of 3 on EE and go to both infected at once that would reward grouping through a faster completion.

I know EE scales and is solo able but, as I have stated EE capable players in a full group can complete EE as fast or faster than soloing in most instances (0.1%) aside.


haunted Halls is a great group quest in EE 3 go to one crest 3 to the other then meet up for the optionals & Dragon.

[Hafeal]

Keep in mind I have nothing against new players and I think the community should be welcoming to them ...


Perhaps obvious but I think it needs to be said YOU are part of the community. Part of the community being welcoming includes YOU - it is not a responsibility to be pawned off somewhere else. It also means you, and the others like you, cannot moan about the lack of players and the new players not being up to snuff - who are you leaving in charge of making them feel welcome or assisting them through the learning curve?

Like it or not, as a community, each and every one of us playing the game has an impact on the players who come and stay and why they stay, beyond the quality of the game itself. Shrug it off or try to minimize it if you want - but all of us can do things to really create a more welcoming environment for new and casual players to stay. If this is a game you love to play, it certainly helps to assure to get more players to stay in the game - every player who stays is a further reassurance the game is here to play longer.





I agree with you, my friend. We all play to have fun and after 8 years I do not consider it fun to mentor or spend an hour in waterworks.

This is a huge issue to me. For too long the devs have focused only on end game play. Rejuvinating sub level 15, finally making a new level 1-15 route for new players and those on a TR (on the Eveningstar side), would give vets new content to enjoy, and perhaps, just perhaps, a chance to slow down and enjoy the journey again. To have a chance to interact with the newbs and casuals.

Who wants to TR and slog through quests you have done 1,000 times? But if you made a new journey, now you reinvigorate the enjoyment of those levels. There is no longer a sense of wonder or enjoyment in re-running that content; this is the devs error. Stop catering to a small percentage of the player base at one end of the spectrum and remember, there is a game that exists before level 15.

[Ralmeth]

I'm going to go back to reiterate my previous suggestion...To increase grouping I think it's just a simple matter of providing an incentive. This wouldn't take any changes to game mechanics and would be easy to implement. Perhaps the developers could try it for a month as a test and see what the effect is. Something like:

1) 10% bonus XP for having three or more people in a group with no late entry penalty - Provides an incentive for everyone to join a group
2) Additional 10% bonus XP for the party leader if there are three or more people in a group with no late entry penalty - Incentive for people to put up LFMs
3) Remove the death penalty - Removes a barrier some players have for joining a group

Grouping is fun, even though it's easy to solo. So I would think the developers would want people to have more fun, which I would think would help with player retention and perhaps loosen up some people's wallets if they are enjoying themselves more. Just my thought...:)

[Gremmlynn]

That's the measuring stick for the issue that the quoted player chose to represent as the norm.


I agree with your points. I believe punishing solo to force grouping will not solve the problem.

Now I do believe that rewarding grouping would promote grouping. Bonus XP, bonus Chests, quests that are complete able easier but grouping through multiple objectives being completed across a wider quest than the typing straight shot dungeons we get.

Just one example:

Outbreak for example forces the whole group to go to one locked door kill the infected and retrieve a key for the other door only to kill the second infected. If the group could split into 2 groups of 3 on EE and go to both infected at once that would reward grouping through a faster completion.

I know EE scales and is solo able but, as I have stated EE capable players in a full group can complete EE as fast or faster than soloing in most instances (0.1%) aside.


haunted Halls is a great group quest in EE 3 go to one crest 3 to the other then meet up for the optionals & Dragon.I personally, don't see the point of encouraging grouping just to split up and everyone only do parts of the quest. It seems to treat the game as something that we actually try to avoid playing any more than necessary and begs the question "Why log in at all?".

Maybe it's just me, but if that were the norm, it would actually cause me to group less, or more selectively, in order to not miss out on the chance to play the whole quest.

[Oxarhamar]

I personally, don't see the point of encouraging grouping just to split up and everyone only do parts of the quest. It seems to treat the game as something that we actually try to avoid playing any more than necessary and begs the question "Why log in at all?".

Maybe it's just me, but if that were the norm, it would actually cause me to group less, or more selectively, in order to not miss out on the chance to play the whole quest.

I'm not trying to avoid playing the game at all but, I do not find it enjoyable past the first exploratory adventure in a quest to go to the same objective as everyone else when there are other objectives to be completed that are open and available to complete simutainiouly.

Von 5 is a great example of a raid that can engage the entire group immersively into different objectives across the map simulatiusly.

Imagine if in Deathwyrm half the group was sent to the shadow side at the first portal then both sides puzzles could be solved at once still requiring 8 light puzzles but not as painfully repetitive due to splitting the workload.

[goodspeed]

to force grouping you would need to do a couple of things. The first would be to base drop rate of % affected by the number in the group.

Next would be to jack the hell out of trap dmg. And then use numbers that would require a full investment into the skill to disable. Also kill the wind step in quest (lol that would **** so many people off)

After that difficulty. Only the opposite way. We're talking nightmare mode for solo, to moderate for full. However this would also have to have a tier for harder gameplay as a full group as well to choose moderate to nightmare with of course % values of drop rate and xp being effected. As said before the BB min 6. (Again im sure id tick many a tr off lol)

And if you really wanted to go oldschool forcing (can't like ffxi ud have to rewrite the whole combat mechanic and.. just way to much **** work.) You put locks in the quest. Doors, runes, whatever that require say a 12 count of subclass type. Heal druid, favored, cleric, scout ranger, rog, ect.

Personally I still think it wouldn't matter though. The same static groups will group together as will the guilds. Its a closed community game now.

[Oxarhamar]

to force grouping you would need to do a couple of things. The first would be to base drop rate of % affected by the number in the group.

Next would be to jack the hell out of trap dmg. And then use numbers that would require a full investment into the skill to disable. Also kill the wind step in quest (lol that would **** so many people off)

After that difficulty. Only the opposite way. We're talking nightmare mode for solo, to moderate for full. However this would also have to have a tier for harder gameplay as a full group as well to choose moderate to nightmare with of course % values of drop rate and xp being effected. As said before the BB min 6. (Again im sure id tick many a tr off lol)

And if you really wanted to go oldschool forcing (can't like ffxi ud have to rewrite the whole combat mechanic and.. just way to much **** work.) You put locks in the quest. Doors, runes, whatever that require say a 12 count of subclass type. Heal druid, favored, cleric, scout ranger, rog, ect.

Personally I still think it wouldn't matter though. The same static groups will group together as will the guilds. Its a closed community game now.


We run EE sagas nightly LFM up for the duration taking all comers. rarely see more than 2 hit the LfM nevermind get a full group.

How much more open can you get than that?

IMO putting heart seeds into end rewards @28 caused this as now a majority are just running the big daily XP quests. Killed sagas and EE for the pug scene. As I stated from day one that they announced the change.

[Glascanon]

Player who are generally capable of soloing EE who group with players capable of soloing EE complete even faster and easier than soloing.



For some reason you feel you need to punish those who play the game by excluding them from playing EE or even EH without a group.

When hours of playtime are not wasted waiting for a group to actually be available who all want to run the same quests then maybe I'd side with "full group for EE" until then NO.

Not waiting around doing EN until a group fills up. We run EE with LFM up taking all comers and are lucky if we get any never mind fill a party unless of course we fill with friends, and guildies.

Reward grouping! Not punish solo/short man.

How about the players who feel punished to run trivialized content because other ppl want to run the highest difficulty level solo?

If u want to solo quests u can find your XP grind on EN and a challenge on EH.

Why does the hardest content need to be so easy that it is about solo XP grind?

Right now:
EN is about XP grind solo or party.
EH is about XP grind solo or party.
EE is about XP grind solo or party.

Actually we have no content wich is challenging either way solo or in party exept maybee a verry few quests.
But those 2 or maybe 3 quests 5 if u include some raids doesn´t keep a Player busy who likes the challenge after running them 100 times.

Why isnt it

EN is about XP grind solo or party
EH is about challenge solo and XP grind party.
EE is impossible solo and challenge in party.

So everyone can do what he wants. XP Grind solo or in party. Challenging content Solo and in party.
Its just not necessary to have the hardest content to be about XP grind solo!

There would be no punishment at all 4 solo players. Because they have their content on EN and EH.
Every quest and every raid has these dificulty settings!
U wont be left out on any content that way and not just have your content in just 2 or 5 quests like it is right now for those who want a challenge.


So if u break it down what is it about soloing EE? Is it about being such a badaz that u can do the hardest content alone?
There is nothing special about it. Everyone can do that. U can train a monkey to do so right now.

So why do the solo players need to owe the whole game content and exclude the players who want a challenge?
Its just stupid, egoistic and absolutely not necessary!

[Blackheartox]

So if u break it down what is it about soloing EE? Is it about being such a badaz that u can do the hardest content alone?
There is nothing special about it. Everyone can do that. U can train a monkey to do so right now.

I have teached my nephew to solo some easier ee content in ddo, he is (almost) 6 years old.
Closest you can get to a monkey ;)

[Oxarhamar]

How about the players who feel punished to run trivialized content because other ppl want to run the highest difficulty level solo?

If u want to solo quests u can find your XP grind on EN and a challenge on EH.

Why does the hardest content need to be so easy that it is about solo XP grind?

Right now:
EN is about XP grind solo or party.
EH is about XP grind solo or party.
EE is about XP grind solo or party.

Actually we have no content wich is challenging either way solo or in party exept maybee a verry few quests.
But those 2 or maybe 3 quests 5 if u include some raids doesn´t keep a Player busy who likes the challenge after running them 100 times.

Why isnt it

EN is about XP grind solo or party
EH is about challenge solo and XP grind party.
EE is impossible solo and challenge in party.

So everyone can do what he wants. XP Grind solo or in party. Challenging content Solo and in party.
Its just not necessary to have the hardest content to be about XP grind solo!

There would be no punishment at all 4 solo players. Because they have their content on EN and EH.
Every quest and every raid has these dificulty settings!
U wont be left out on any content that way and not just have your content in just 2 or 5 quests like it is right now for those who want a challenge.


So if u break it down what is it about soloing EE? Is it about being such a badaz that u can do the hardest content alone?
There is nothing special about it. Everyone can do that. U can train a monkey to do so right now.

So why do the solo players need to owe the whole game content and exclude the players who want a challenge?
Its just stupid, egoistic and absolutely not necessary!


If you've paid attention to that which you quoted I don't solo much it's boring I run mostly static or guild runs leaving the LFM open to all comers.

solo EE is the easiest EE can get. Been saying this every time someone points to a solo EE and says "boo"


Still I do not believe punishing solo and shortman groups (about the only groups going these days) will revitalize grouping in EE.
I run EE for the sagas and it's less boring than EN EH.


We could force a full group to run EE and you know what we would get? groups that sat idle with party up (need 2 more for EE) forcing groups to have a trapper, tank, healer like the old tank and spank days would just lead to LFMs that said need X then never filled or players would just gravitate towards EN ( many already have its higher XP min)

Btw at the hardes challenge is 4 man EE Full scaling at that point. You want challenge do it and bring 3 pikers.

[Glascanon]

Still I do not believe punishing solo and shortman groups (about the only groups going these days) will revitalize grouping in EE.

Maybee. Maybee not.

But at least it would give players who like a challenge in a party wich requires teamplay to finish quests a content.
That would bring me back to the game instead of hanging around in the forums trying to change some minds and getting attention that this game has become way to easy.



I run EE for the sagas and it's less boring than EN EH.

Maybe less boring but still boring.

By increasing the difficulty level or nerf the OP builds EH could be challenging or "less boring" as u call it as well. So there is no need to do the less boring stuff on EE if u can have same game experience on EH.



We could force a full group to run EE and you know what we would get? groups that sat idle with party up (need 2 more for EE) forcing groups to have a trapper, tank, healer like the old tank and spank days would just lead to LFMs that said need X then never filled or players would just gravitate towards EN ( many already have its higher XP min)

It would give the game something special u don't do every day and running EE would be somehow exiting. Wich involves teamplay and communication. That what most ppl expect when they talking about MMO.
Something wich is not about XP per minute. (Why do we need 3 Difficulty setting about XP per minute? Thats ********!)
Y most content would have ben done on EN EH especially if u want to grind XP per Minute but whats wrong about that?
IF EH feels like EE right now u can have the same game experience like now plus an additional one.
U dont loose something u win something.
Why do we have 4 difficulty levels if the lowest of it is not in use at all but the devs spend time to create it, while at the same time there is no challenge for a full man party.
And i dont even say that it should be necessary to have tanks and healers but it should at least help instead of slowing down the grind due the lag of DPS of such classes.



Btw at the hardes challenge is 4 man EE Full scaling at that point. You want challenge do it and bring 3 pikers.

That´s not challenging at all. its same boredom and takes just longer time that's it.

[Oxarhamar]

Maybee. Maybee not.

But at least it would give players who like a challenge in a party wich requires teamplay to finish quests a content.
That would bring me back to the game instead of hanging around in the forums trying to change some minds and getting attention that this game has become way to easy.



Maybe less boring but still boring.

By increasing the difficulty level or nerf the OP builds EH could be challenging or "less boring" as u call it as well. So there is no need to do the less boring stuff on EE if u can have same game experience on EH.



It would give the game something special u don't do every day and running EE would be somehow exiting. Wich involves teamplay and communication. That what most ppl expect when they talking about MMO.
Something wich is not about XP per minute. (Why do we need 3 Difficulty setting about XP per minute? Thats ********!)
Y most content would have ben done on EN EH especially if u want to grind XP per Minute but whats wrong about that?
IF EH feels like EE right now u can have the same game experience like now plus an additional one.
U dont loose something u win something.
Why do we have 4 difficulty levels if the lowest of it is not in use at all but the devs spend time to create it, while at the same time there is no challenge for a full man party.
And i dont even say that it should be necessary to have tanks and healers but it should at least help instead of slowing down the grind due the lag of DPS of such classes.



That´s not challenging at all. its same boredom and takes just longer time that's it.



You want EE to challenge a group but, not offer XP well then it needs to offer something else.

EE items have been killed off so what do you suggest because your Challenge with no reward idea falls flat.

[Glascanon]

You want EE to challenge a group but, not offer XP well then it needs to offer something else.


Y. Definitely.

Stuff like Fun would be nice!

The fact that EE offers something wich EH players couldn't get made the casuals cry to get these lately crazy buffs.

Please dont do that again. Just give us the fun back and leave us alone!

Maybee a slightly higher dropp rate wich fits to the extra time to run the quest would solve what u r talking about.

But i myself dont need an extra reward to runn a content wich makes me have more fun.

What makes a good ego shooter player play a game in highest dificulty? They get less Ammo Less health but therefore they get killed faster and more enemys.

They do it because its more fun to do that. To have a challenge wich fits their skills. No extra reward except the good feeling u get after u have done the game.


Every update brought us more power. The further updates i just increased my limits. Pull more Mobs. Do EE faster. But there is no limit anymore exept the dungeon allert wich makes u stop pull more mobs.
Have u known that the Mioor debuff in Haunted halls stops stacking at 100 Stacks? There are no limits anymore. Im bored and this is making me sad because i really like(d) this Game.

[Oxarhamar]

Y. Definitely.

Stuff like Fun would be nice!

The fact that EE offers something wich EH players couldn't get made the casuals cry to get these lately crazy buffs.

Please dont do that again. Just give us the fun back and leave us alone!

Think your in the minority here mate. Only a very small portion of the players want EE to be a challenge that offers no incentive other than challenge.

[Glascanon]

Think your in the minority here mate. Only a very small portion of the players want EE to be a challenge that offers no incentive other than challenge.

But since we have 4 Difficulty settings and one of them is not even used from the community, the game has the mechanics to give those players the content they want.

And even if only just 10% are used to runn EE most of the time i gues at least 20% will do it to have an offtime of the Grind and another 50% will get trilled by doing their first EE and get addicted to the feeling of success.

Many PPL will like to see a content wich fits the power of their LVL 28 full geared toon before they start the next ETR or TR.
Whats the matter of having the fastest car in the world if there is no Road to drive it?

Maybee its not the most used difficulty level. But there are more ppl out there who would enjoy this as u might think.

Y there will be another 50% of player wich will never See EE or join it and notice that they cant handle it.

But if i can not handle the hardest difficulty level in a shooter game i am free to choose a lower one.

[Vint]

to force grouping you would need to do a couple of things. The first would be to base drop rate of % affected by the number in the group.

Next would be to jack the hell out of trap dmg. And then use numbers that would require a full investment into the skill to disable. Also kill the wind step in quest (lol that would **** so many people off)

You would alienate a ton of players this way. Number one it would be just as bad as when LFM’s were up for an hour looking for a cleric. Know we would see parties waiting an hour for trappers.

Then you have the problem of people (especially new) that would blow trap boxes because they do not know how to build for it. Not calling all new players morons, but I can imagine a few would walk away if they were belittled for blowing a trap and then they party wipes because of it.

[Glascanon]

Then you have the problem of people (especially new) that would blow trap boxes because they do not know how to build for it. Not calling all new players morons, but I can imagine a few would walk away if they were belittled for blowing a trap and then they party wipes because of it.

So a new player who has no idea how to build a good trapper, crappy gear steps right in the hardest difficulty available and fails. And this is... ....bad?


Maybee i am a bit oldscool but the time that happened to me when i started the game this was giving me a challenge.
Increasing my skills research my opportunitys and come back when im better and do this.

U should try that. It gives a good feeling that u can do something now what u couldn't do before instead of getting everything for free.
But that feeling is somehow gone if noone gives a s*** if there are disabled or not except the slight XP bonus.

And making the game to easy makes a lot of ppl go and quit the game as well!

And this is why this:

Think your in the minority here mate.
Might be true. Many others who think equal are probably gone alreddy.
But i know im far from being alone.
The most PPl i used to play with are thinking the same way.

[Monkey-Boy]

I have teached my nephew to solo some easier ee content in ddo, he is (almost) 6 years old.
Closest you can get to a monkey ;)

Excuse me?

[Oxarhamar]

I am not against seeing more challenge or encouraging grouping.

However I feel that trying to create challenge by forcing grouping to complete EE while offering no reward will only further then problem.

Better to encourage grouping in EE then try to force it.

Bonus XP for a full group
Flawless victory bonus applied to the individual rather than the full party losing out on 10% when one dies.
Extra chest for a full group
+1 loot bonus for full group
Bonus guild Renown for a full group (regardless of what guildie players are in)
Bringing back tiered loot or EE only items like Augments from Tor & FoT.

[Waaye]

if players would stop being so horrible more people would put up LFMs.
Rude players are a factor, Monkey-boy, but the problem is much larger than just how players are treating each other.

Getting a good group in an LFM is rare because so many factors must be matched. First the characters must be on the same server. Then the players must be in similar time zones to be available at the time of the LFM. If those things match then the characters must be within a couple of levels of each other and with complementary skill sets. If all of those things match then their playing speeds must also match. If one player is trying to complete the quest in 7 minutes and has done it in 10 and another needs at lease 90 to enjoy the content then both are unlikely to be satisified with the run. Finally, all of the players must have compatible personalities.

The current system is like throwing cats and dogs, foxes and chickens, all into the same pen and expecting them to get along. When the fur and feathers inevitably start flying whose fault is it?

[Vint]

So a new player who has no idea how to build a good trapper, crappy gear steps right in the hardest difficulty available and fails. And this is... ....bad?


Maybee i am a bit oldscool but the time that happened to me when i started the game this was giving me a challenge.
Increasing my skills research my opportunitys and come back when im better and do this.

U should try that. It gives a good feeling that u can do something now what u couldn't do before instead of getting everything for free.
But that feeling is somehow gone if noone gives a s*** if there are disabled or not except the slight XP bonus.

I am all for a challenge, but many people on these forums say we have to cater to the “Facebook” crowd and make this game easy for everyone.

I am all for a challenge, but I also know that many casual people will cry, complain and quit if they are challenged to the point where they actually have to put much thought into making a character. Believe me, I am one that has been against the dumbing down, but it is necessary to keep people playing I guess.

Over the years we have seen many suggestions on how to increase grouping and there has not been one that seems reasonable enough to implement. Giving people extra xp for a full group might not be bad, but this is not incentive enough for many of us to have to deal with puggers.

[Gremmlynn]

So a new player who has no idea how to build a good trapper, crappy gear steps right in the hardest difficulty available and fails. And this is... ....bad?If it causes enough of them to quit the game it is very bad.

[Glascanon]

If it causes enough of them to quit the game it is very bad.

Sry but if a player quits the game because he isnt able to play it at the highest difficulty right after reaching epic levels and is to snobby to switch to a lower until he reaches the power to make it, he wouldn't stay for long anyway.

But screwing up with the GAMERS wich are really in to the game spend time and money and love to play it since years. Make them quit by trivializing the content.

Thats the Point where a game looses a very important Basement of the community.

The Pro gamers made the Big games Big building a solid basement where every casual gamer can learn from.

[Gremmlynn]

Sry but if a player quits the game because he isnt able to play it at the highest difficulty right after reaching epic levels and is to snobby to switch to a lower until he reaches the power to make it, he wouldn't stay for long anyway.

But screwing up with the GAMERS wich are really in to the game spend time and money and love to play it since years. Make them quit by trivializing the content.

Thats the Point where a game looses a very important Basement of the community.

The Pro gamers made the Big games Big building a solid basement where every casual gamer can learn from.That sounds like ego talking to me. It's more likely the big money is in making games that casual gamers don't need others to learn from at all. Games that are pretty much just learned by playing them.

GAMERS are likely to small a demographic spread out amongst to many games to be worth the investment to even develop games for. This is the direction Turbine is moving the game in with the recent changes.

[Glascanon]

That sounds like ego talking to me. It's more likely the big money is in making games that casual gamers don't need others to learn from at all. Games that are pretty much just learned by playing them.

GAMERS are likely to small a demographic spread out amongst to many games to be worth the investment to even develop games for. This is the direction Turbine is moving the game in with the recent changes.

Like i said: No Casual would loose any content by running in a lower difficulty mode.

What u basically say is that the common DDO player is to stupid to get that there are ppl out there who are just playing the game better then they do. So that they need a own content.

Its not that casuals where not playing DDO before these latest insane power creep updates.
They just did it on Epic Normal or Epic Hard. Some where crying that EE is to hard 4 them but the most just enjoyed the EH content.

A Player who quits the game because hes not able to do the hardest content will also not stay for long if he is able to do so.

So screwing up with players who are playing this game for jears now to keep others a few weeks longer in this game is a good choice to keep this Game alive?
I dont think so!

Lets say u have an restaurant and 20% of your custumers come verry often for your extra hot chilli sauce since years now. U have other chilli sauces on your list for those who want it less hot.
Now the other 80%: most of them never come back anyway or u see the faces only every few moths. Lets say 50% of them want the hot sauce and u say to them "take care this is realy hot are u shure?" And they say jess. But then some of them say "oh that sauce they gave me was to hot ill never come back here."
Is it smart to remove the extra hot chili sauce from your list?

[Oxarhamar]

Like i said: No Casual would loose any content by running in a lower difficulty mode.

What u basically say is that the common DDO player is to stupid to get that there are ppl out there who are just playing the game better then they do. So that they need a own content.

Its not that casuals where not playing DDO before these latest insane power creep updates.
They just did it on Epic Normal or Epic Hard. Some where crying that EE is to hard 4 them but the most just enjoyed the EH content.

A Player who quits the game because hes not able to do the hardest content will also not stay for long if he is able to do so.

So screwing up with players who are playing this game for jears now to keep others a few weeks longer in this game is a good choice to keep this Game alive?
I dont think so!

Lets say u have an restaurant and 20% of your custumers come verry often for your extra hot chilli sauce since years now. U have other chilli sauces on your list for those who want it less hot.
Now the other 80%: most of them never come back anyway or u see the faces only every few moths. Lets say 50% of them want the hot sauce and u say to them "take care this is realy hot are u shure?" And they say jess. But then some of them say "oh that sauce they gave me was to hot ill never come back here."
Is it smart to remove the extra hot chili sauce from your list?



To be truthful to the matter the players that were claiming EE was too hard and punished casuals were doing so at a time when Commendations of Valor were required to ETR prior to Seeds @28 requiring higher number of repetitions on EH and exponentially more on EN.

The content difficulty wasn't nerfed it has remained static with a few exceptions.

In contrast.

Now classes, melee, PRR& MRR have been buffed all things the players asked for.

making content easier by proxy sure but, the difficulty hasn't been changed since MOTU.


Your analogies are wonderful but, the numbers pulled out of the air are not representative of the situation in game.

[Qhualor]

Its not that casuals where not playing DDO before these latest insane power creep updates.
They just did it on Epic Normal or Epic Hard. Some where crying that EE is to hard 4 them but the most just enjoyed the EH content.

in the beginning most people were running EH and felt challenged because we hadn't maxxed out destinies and twists and had better epic gear developed yet. it wasn't until tiered loot and EGH that we started seeing complaints about higher difficulty issues with some players. incentives to run higher difficulties that were more difficult for the EH crowd started a battle between average player and what the forum calls the "0.00001%" of the population. incentives is what muddies the playground between all types of players as we have seen a seesaw affect happen with casualization.

[Gremmlynn]

Like i said: No Casual would loose any content by running in a lower difficulty mode.

What u basically say is that the common DDO player is to stupid to get that there are ppl out there who are just playing the game better then they do. So that they need a own content.

Its not that casuals where not playing DDO before these latest insane power creep updates.
They just did it on Epic Normal or Epic Hard. Some where crying that EE is to hard 4 them but the most just enjoyed the EH content.

A Player who quits the game because hes not able to do the hardest content will also not stay for long if he is able to do so.

So screwing up with players who are playing this game for jears now to keep others a few weeks longer in this game is a good choice to keep this Game alive?
I dont think so!

Lets say u have an restaurant and 20% of your custumers come verry often for your extra hot chilli sauce since years now. U have other chilli sauces on your list for those who want it less hot.
Now the other 80%: most of them never come back anyway or u see the faces only every few moths. Lets say 50% of them want the hot sauce and u say to them "take care this is realy hot are u shure?" And they say jess. But then some of them say "oh that sauce they gave me was to hot ill never come back here."
Is it smart to remove the extra hot chili sauce from your list?If the reputation for serving extra hot Chilli Sauce keeps enough people from even walking through the door, then yes it is smart. Frankly, I doubt in the case of DDO that 20% is an accurate number, even 2% is probably high if you consider everyone who tries the game and ends up spending something.

As far as that extra hard content goes. I believe it's probably on their list to add that, as end game content where it belongs, at some point after they get the game to an end game. First get it to level 30, then start building an end game around that where that sort of play belongs.

[Singular]

I am not against seeing more challenge or encouraging grouping.

However I feel that trying to create challenge by forcing grouping to complete EE while offering no reward will only further then problem.

Better to encourage grouping in EE then try to force it.

Bonus XP for a full group
Flawless victory bonus applied to the individual rather than the full party losing out on 10% when one dies.
Extra chest for a full group
+1 loot bonus for full group
Bonus guild Renown for a full group (regardless of what guildie players are in)
Bringing back tiered loot or EE only items like Augments from Tor & FoT.

Sounds perfect.

For solo EE to actually mean something, it would actually have to be difficult :p
;p
;p

[goodspeed]

You would alienate a ton of players this way. Number one it would be just as bad as when LFM’s were up for an hour looking for a cleric. Know we would see parties waiting an hour for trappers.

Then you have the problem of people (especially new) that would blow trap boxes because they do not know how to build for it. Not calling all new players morons, but I can imagine a few would walk away if they were belittled for blowing a trap and then they party wipes because of it.

True but its the only way. Nothing else would force a grouping for instances.

And plus new people will always suck. If their smart and they ask and they heed they'll be redirected to the forum where they will find out how to build for greatness. Id say they would research before building but not to many people have that process circuit. Some it takes longer, others have the thought process equivalent to the person that will say share please every day. Because they are a goldfish lol

[Oxarhamar]

True but its the only way. Nothing else would force a grouping for instances.

And plus new people will always suck. If their smart and they ask and they heed they'll be redirected to the forum where they will find out how to build for greatness. Id say they would research before building but not to many people have that process circuit. Some it takes longer, others have the thought process equivalent to the person that will say share please every day. Because they are a goldfish lol



Force Bad

Reward Good