Unfinished DDO: the story of High Dev turnover, and revolving Producers

[IronClan]

The following is a list of things that were very much "in progress" or abandoned or just never delivered in DDO that makes the games quality level suffer, most of of them can be chalked up to the merry go round of Producers and Developers DDO has had.



The "quality of life" pass that was supposed to be a concerted effort to address rough edges, long standing bugs and poor UI that abounds in DDO.
Ghostbane: half finished loot system that was universally derided by players, how would it have fared if it had been finished or even mostly finished instead of rushed out the door? Better maybe?
Unghostbanning the fixing of the above disaster has been left half done despite assurances it would be finished, Players have no way to know if this is because the Dev's think it's "good enough" now, or if the turn over has again caused abandonment of previous producers commitment. You guys can act like "we never promised to reverse the damage completely" but the current level of improvement is not acceptable.
Feather of Sun's "loot polish pass" Do current DDO Dev's realize that the itemization in this game is half way through an unfinished polish pass? level 1 through 13 packs have all had their Heroic loot polished (+[W] added, affixes updated and augments added to them) while Epic versions of those items as well as level 14 to 19 Heroic items were left unpolished, because Feather was let go. Which leads to disjointed itemization and many pieces of higher level loot that are objectively worse than much lower level loot. This looks low budg and directionless (like a Worker was doing whatever he felt like doing without design direction) and leaves itemization in a state of disjointed non-continuity, where some hard to craft Epic S/S/S and higher ML items are objectively worse than lower level items. It also just sucks that you're more likely to have a augment slot available on a ML6 item than you are an ML18 item.
Adjustment of Challenge XP promised, but never delivered I know I know: you tweaked those numbers a little here and there: but no one noticed, so... might as well call a spade a spade; that's the same thing as didn't do it at all from out here looking in.
Adjustment of collectable turn in numbers to be more reasonable
Un-Funproofing an additional round of changes to make wearable items that suffered during ghostbane be more diverse and reincorporate old well liked affixes (right now 9 out of 10 randgen items are "Frost/Fire/Acidproof of hitpoints" they all fall into a same/same cycle of VERY flavorless, bland, repetitious and predictable affix combo's.
The mostly broken but still in the game "teleport to quest" function that for some reason pops up every once in a while as a "teleport to quest failed" error
The "you're not flagged for this quest do you still want to join this LFM" dialog box that once in a blue moon decides to pop up and annoy people who just double clicked an LFM it doesn't actually pop up when I'm not flagged... it seems to wait until I am actually flagged or there's no actual flagging for the quest at all.


Many of these are a direct indictment of the lack coherent DIRECTION caused by high churn rate. DDO players shouldn't suffer a poorer less polished game because DDO is Turbine's least important property and the very obvious fact that DDO Dev's clearly sometimes work on what they are feeling like working on. If this wasn't the case then the next loot Dev would have finished Feather's loot polish pass.

I am hoping Sev can look into these and realize as unfun as it may be to inherit expectations from past blunders, that upholding past Dev's commitments or at least FINISHING WHAT THEY STARTED might be the biggest thing you can quickly improve about DDO.

Please post your own, I'm sure there are many I am missing

[Knobull]

That's called "Agile" development. It's the bestest thing ever! Haven't you heard? Second only to virtualisation of servers. /sarcasm

[janave]

Maybe it is just me, but i think working with loot is only second to quest/area design in terms of funnnesss. So inheriting that part is possibly in the "cool" bucket.

They also not promised but mentioned crafting revamps/tweaks so that could have good side effects on the randgen too.

Its quite relative to define something "complete", as there is always room for improvement. That said, the randgen does feel unfinished, it feels like its done because "it had to be done" before n date.

[legendkilleroll]

Hope you posted this in the council forums or brought some of it up there and not just speaking out now your term is done

[TitusOvid]

It would be nice to know if this will be addressed in the future or since it's no ones baby any more it is all abandoned.

[Lauf]

Hope you posted this in the council forums or brought some of it up there and not just speaking out now your term is done

the man raises valid points, why should you care where or when, or for that matter who chose to bring it up?

the truth remains true.

[LuKaSu]

For me, I'd say my favorite (i.e., wish they would come back) "dropped projects" are Iconics and Cannith Crafting.

[Flavilandile]

Hope you posted this in the council forums or brought some of it up there and not just speaking out now your term is done

You have no idea how many time it has been posted ( in it's own topic or through derailled threads ) while we were in the PC....
It was one of the recuring topic ( along with dealing with the Bravery Bonus/DungeonScalling system that hurts LFM )

I suspect Iron post is just a gentle reminder that there's a lot of things that need attention.... ASAP....

[Oliphant]

For me, I'd say my favorite (i.e., wish they would come back) "dropped projects" are Iconics and Cannith Crafting.

On DDOcast Severlin and team basically said Cannith crafting is getting a revamp soon and it's priority 2 in terms of timing if things slip. Temple of Elemental Evil and Epic Greensteel would be the prime examples of priority 1 timing.

[legendkilleroll]

You have no idea how many time it has been posted ( in it's own topic or through derailled threads ) while we were in the PC....
It was one of the recuring topic ( along with dealing with the Bravery Bonus/DungeonScalling system that hurts LFM )

I suspect Iron post is just a gentle reminder that there's a lot of things that need attention.... ASAP....

Well thats good to know, im sure there wasnt much response then from the devs then

[Ancient]

That's called "Agile" development. It's the bestest thing ever! Haven't you heard? Second only to virtualisation of servers. /sarcasm

When I was learning about agile, I questioned if it would result in inconsistency and unfinished product features. I was assured that this was not the case due to the long term direction provided by product management. Sounds great... then a few months later, I observed product managements philosophy that the best way to develop/mature product managers is by constantly shuffling them between products...

One of the two philosophies (or both) need to go.

[AnubisPrime]

Considering that the game, if counting the beta in late 2005 is going on 10 years old I am happy to get any updates, revamps and fixes that I can get. I'm not arguing that when various devs over the years had their hands at the wheel, there were new systems stacked upon old systems. Consequences are tons of types of crafting systems and unused collectibles. There's lot's to clean up--no doubt. Does Atari have some blame for the mediocre distribution of this game at launch? There was a lawsuit. Things may be different now if marketing and advertisement were done properly.

The good things still are:

The core game and combat still are top notch. The WoW clones both old and new still have that fake combat "dance" that I just can't stomach. I would rather go back to console FPS games exclusively than go back to those games.

The devs are prioritizing what we asked for. Greensteel and Cannith crafting are on the list. The Monster Manual was mentioned as well.

Despite workforce reductions and personnel changes we are still getting content, updates, and fixes.

All is not DOOM...

[LuKaSu]

On DDOcast Severlin and team basically said Cannith crafting is getting a revamp soon and it's priority 2 in terms of timing if things slip. Temple of Elemental Evil and Epic Greensteel would be the prime examples of priority 1 timing.

Cool, great info!

[slarden]

Sev talks about specific game features that makes me realize he gets it. I think he is actually playing the game. I never got the impression that any of the previous producers understood the game the way Sev does. Did you hear him talk on DDOCast? He gets it.

As for quality of life, the ship update is the best quality of life improvement I could have asked for. NOTHING else they could have done tops that in terms of time-saving and not having to wait around while people rebuff.

As for random loot, I would like to see more things in the loot table, but I am glad they are focused on named items and Sev has a good vision for what the game will look like at level 30 with random items being fillers and named items and even re-vamped cannith crafting being better options.

The glass is half full and not half empty - actually more like 80% full with a good plan to fill the rest of the 20%. We lack an end game, but it makes sense to wait till 30 for that. I would preferred to keep the level cap at 28 and start with an end game now, but I will be patient.

I have alot of neglected alts I need to get to 28 and with at least 3 ETR.

[Highlander]

You have no idea how many time it has been posted ( in it's own topic or through derailled threads ) while we were in the PC....
It was one of the recuring topic ( along with dealing with the Bravery Bonus/DungeonScalling system that hurts LFM )

I suspect Iron post is just a gentle reminder that there's a lot of things that need attention.... ASAP....

OP - I agree with your points, and would like to see some of these addressed if only for internal consistency of systems. The core logic behind those loot refreshes etc must be there, so someone just needs to spend the time doing it. I suspect the response will be, new content and loot more important (because they can sell it as well as keeping the lynch mob from their doors).
You did well to remember/find all those.

Flavilandile - my question is - so why bring it up here?
The PC discussions would have had the eyes and ears of the devs. How is getting the masses involved going to change anything? Do you think a social uprising will change Sev's priorities?

The best you will achieve here will be the usual "Turbine-can-do-no-wrong" crowd throwing poo at the "Turbine-does-everything-wrong" crowd until the thread gets locked or deleted.

I would love to see IronClan be given the opportunity to debate these issues with Sev on one of the webcasts - just so it is a live Q&A session.
Sev has been pretty open about some issues having technical obstacles, and so you can understand the priorities chosen when given finite resources. It would be nice to know if some of these will ever get addressed.

[LightBear]

Pfft, had an answer here for the op but hit backspace to correct a typo and boom went back a page.

Not going to type it all back except for this:
On point one, so you've been lied to by women. What else did you expect? ;)

[bonscott87]

On DDOcast Severlin and team basically said Cannith crafting is getting a revamp soon and it's priority 2 in terms of timing if things slip. Temple of Elemental Evil and Epic Greensteel would be the prime examples of priority 1 timing.

Yea, that was a great interview and I had the same feeling. They addressed many of the things in this thread actually like loot and they specifically said they are looking to revamp Cannith crafting as they want to breath new life into it and get it up to par.

In my opinion they can abandon iconics and much of the FR. I've been a long time fan of the FR but DDO's toe dipping into it at the direction of WB has just fractured the player community in my opinion. You can see in the last few updates bringing the focus back to the base Eberron setting and I hope they continue. Oh what could have been if all that development time spent on two FR expansions and the iconic classes would have been spent instead on the base game that was already there. But that's water over the bridge and I don't think there will be any more development like that again for a game this old. Hopefully I'm wrong.

[jalont]

DDO has never been a successful game.

There seems to be a lot of hate about the turnover and the way the devs abandon systems. To me, that seems to be the thing that has kept DDO going while most other MMOs have folded under their own weight. DDO should have been closed down long ago, but it still carries on, likely because of WB's ability to actually run a business.

[kmoustakas]

I agree with everything the op said.

I have to wonder, is it possible that whoever is in charge now wasn't even around when the loot was initially changed and has zero idea what happened back then.

[jalont]

I agree with everything the op said.

I have to wonder, is it possible that whoever is in charge now wasn't even around when the loot was initially changed and has zero idea what happened back then.

The person in charge now was working on AC when that happened. He was around, but who knows how much he's aware of what happened.

[bonscott87]

He's well aware. They talked about loot for at least 10 minutes in the podcast posted above. Give it a listen.

[IronClan]

Well thats good to know, im sure there wasnt much response then from the devs then

Hafeal counted 300+ threads started by PC members, I would hazard a guess that a single digit % of them received a reply by a Dev.

More importantly I would estimate that replies or posts by Producers not named Rowan, Maj Mal (for the 3 days he was a Producer) or Sev (who we didn't know was a producer) could be counted on one hand.

Which after I wrote it down somehow seems less impactful like "wow what are you complaining about 3 producers posted and the others posted once or twice" so let me clearify: Rowan was here for a few weeks and indeed was very communicative (I liked Rowan he was almost Sev like and I believe the uptick in communication was his initial idea, when he left it trailed off badly until we started making a fuss about it again, many of you will recall this). Majmal's only posts to the PC were posted while he was sipping a cup of coffee with the words "worlds newest DDO producer" and that mug was still warm when they handed him a fresh cup with LOTRO written on it. Interestingly MajMal hinted at Gnomes as upcoming new race, and also publicly said he was putting in free server transfers (though he did not say this on the PC forums it was reposted there from "elsewhere") these are two bullet points I did NOT put on this version of my unfinished list. And in fairness the list I posted to the PC WAS addressed by Sev and I believe Varg to the degree they could/wished to.. and this version of my list believe it or not, reflects what they said.

That said, as much as I respect Sev and Varg these things are still unfinished business as far as I and I believe many of the player base view it. I hear comments about these things on a nightly basis while playing the game. Last night it was Cannith Crafting/unfinished loot pass discussion while running eGH Saga's in a group that was brought up because of this thread. The impression I get is that these are significantly more negatively perceived by the every day player than the Dev's might suspect.

[count_spicoli]

Ya sev is great. But I thought rowan was great after his interview on ddo cast and then he was gone 3 weeks later. This game is defiantly a chopped up Frankenstein version of its original creation. But the guys who originally created it were geniuses and really have kept this game alive because of the combat and conversions of dnd monsters to actual images.

As far as loot feather screwed it all up with random loot. He had one good update with the fiery sun and all that then did the ghostbane and shadow fail loot. There was a time when a chest could produce weird random loot. My bro pulled a purple ioun stone in ire stone inlet when he was level 5 back before you got one every 3 quest completions. That came a week later and he was not happy. Point is nnow just run by chests. I don't even bother looting them. There is absolutely nothing in random chests of any interest. I wish we could find a developer to fix this.

[Highlander]

DDO has never been a successful game.

There seems to be a lot of hate about the turnover and the way the devs abandon systems. To me, that seems to be the thing that has kept DDO going while most other MMOs have folded under their own weight. DDO should have been closed down long ago, but it still carries on, likely because of WB's ability to actually run a business.


Thank you Mr Positivity! :-)

On what basis would you say, "DDO has never been a successful game"?
Technical/Innovation/Pioneering success? I think could be credited with success here - even today most people say the character customization and combat identifies DDO from the masses.
Commercial success? These games aren't charities. If it weren't making money, then it would have closed.
I think DDO has had periods where it was successful. In my opinion, I thought DDO did well in the early days 2006-07. Post MOTU saw a nice resurgence in numbers and fun factor within the game.

By success, is your benchmark WoW? There are few games that are even in the same league as WoW, so I wouldn't define success based on that.
I'm not sure I follow your logic - you think DDO's survival is premised on past devs abandoning systems and leaving the game with a graveyard of incomplete projects?

"DDO should have been closed down long ago, but it still carries on, likely because of WB's ability to actually run a business."
What do you mean by this?

[HAL]

Ya sev is great. But I thought rowan was great after his interview on ddo cast and then he was gone 3 weeks later. This game is defiantly a chopped up Frankenstein version of its original creation. But the guys who originally created it were geniuses and really have kept this game alive because of the combat and conversions of dnd monsters to actual images.

As far as loot feather screwed it all up with random loot. He had one good update with the fiery sun and all that then did the ghostbane and shadow fail loot. There was a time when a chest could produce weird random loot. My bro pulled a purple ioun stone in ire stone inlet when he was level 5 back before you got one every 3 quest completions. That came a week later and he was not happy. Point is nnow just run by chests. I don't even bother looting them. There is absolutely nothing in random chests of any interest. I wish we could find a developer to fix this.

There was a time when you could (very rarely) pull really nice things from random chests. A guildy pulled an Ioun Stone and over many years I've pulled Astral Diamonds, Tomes (back when +2 was the highest), and a Collapsed Portable Hole. Nowdays you get nothing good from random chests.

[Highlander]

More importantly I would estimate that replies or posts by Producers not named Rowan, Maj Mal (for the 3 days he was a Producer) or Sev (who we didn't know was a producer) could be counted on one hand.


Do you mean Vivacious Vyvian and What-exactly-does-he-do-Glin?

If you want Glin's attention, you needed to use twitter, not the forums.
I suspect his attention span is only 144 characters long. :-)

As for Vivacious Vyv, I don't think anyone heard from her much so don't feel left out.
Too busy Producing to read/respond to the forums.

[Connman]

There was a time when you could (very rarely) pull really nice things from random chests. A guildy pulled an Ioun Stone and over many years I've pulled Astral Diamonds, Tomes (back when +2 was the highest), and a Collapsed Portable Hole. Nowdays you get nothing good from random chests.

I pulled a cph just the other day, have like 20 sitting in the bank, for the off chance when some random person is looking for one and I can dump it off on them.

As far as nothing good in the chests, I think what you meant to say HAL, "is there is nothing good from random chests, after you've opened about 10 of them, because then you will have every permutation of ghostbane you could ever hope for."

And if that wasn't what you meant to say well phooey :P

[HAL]

I pulled a cph just the other day, have like 20 sitting in the bank, for the off chance when some random person is looking for one and I can dump it off on them.

As far as nothing good in the chests, I think what you meant to say HAL, "is there is nothing good from random chests, after you've opened about 10 of them, because then you will have every permutation of ghostbane you could ever hope for."

And if that wasn't what you meant to say well phooey :P

Lol, well there is certainly the ghostbane issue. But the drop rate of rare items seems to have dropped significantly also.

[PermaBanned]

DDO has never been a successful game.
<snip>
DDO should have been closed down long ago, but it still carries on, likely because of WB's ability to actually run a business.lol "WBs ability to actually run a business" is to carry an unsuccessful propery/product for several years running, with no imminent end in sight? Either your opinion is that we're kept around as an annual loss write-off or me thinks you need to re-evaluate the phrases "never been a success" and "ability to run a business" ;)

[bsquishwizzy]

High developer turnover and unfinished sections are about the norm in software development. I don't recall ever working for a company that didn't have a revolving door strategy for software people. It's been a part of the business now for - literally - decades.

As fort the comments on Agile? Yeah. Development by consensus is not a recipe for success.

[bsquishwizzy]

In the end, the only real gauge that DDO will be measured by is whether it is able to turn a profit for successive years. Given they are adding content, and not scaling back staff to go to "maintenance mode" (bug fixes and keeping the lights on), I'd say that it is successful.

Having 30 million players and generating $10.00 profit is no where near as successful as having 30,000 players and $1000.00 profit. That's how business works.

[jalont]

lol "WBs ability to actually run a business" is to carry an unsuccessful propery/product for several years running, with no imminent end in sight? Either your opinion is that we're kept around as an annual loss write-off or me thinks you need to re-evaluate the phrases "never been a success" and "ability to run a business" ;)

I could had explained better.

DDO has never been a success population-wise. Even at its f2p peak, it had a population lower than most games that fold. Yet Turbine has been able to keep the game going with these small number, while most other game companies couldn't.

[Chai]

I could had explained better.

DDO has never been a success population-wise. Even at its f2p peak, it had a population lower than most games that fold. Yet Turbine has been able to keep the game going with these small number, while most other game companies couldn't.

Due to becoming a small arm of a super hyper global Omni mega huge umbrella corporation, who will scale the size of its child company to the size of the fan base it serves - a luxury most game companies do not have.

That still doesn't explain the half complete all but abandoned for years at a time systems, most of which were desired in a finished state, and showed potential.

[GoldyGopher]

If you are old enough to remember the large scale player revolt/protest in Everquest back in the spring of 2004 dealt with many of the same type of issues.

DDO has unfinished systems and changes going back to when Judith Hoffman was our Executive Producer.

However the problems of systems in DDO goes beyond unfinished systems its the short cuts taken with a number of systems that creates problems.

Reaver's Reach is an example of an incomplete system in the game.
Dragon Touched Crafting and Green Steel Crafting are the same system. However Dragon Touched is supposed to be a simpler version, we were supposed to create shields as well as armor, it was supposed to expand on Dragon Scale Armor ... Tell me how that worked out?
Why the short cuts? - Prisoner of Prophecy was the last release before DDO went with the Hybrid F2P/Subscription model.

[Thar]

Things that were promised and never fixed.

immunitiy to stun for short time so you can't be chain stunned
Evening star challenge turn ins to be lowered.
old pref/suffix for loot returned. (ie heal amp, weapon effects, etc)
purpose for armor... you forgot light armor...
more light shields/bucklers. (imo these should have been implemented like runearms - one per quest chain reward, ie water works, co6, etc)
FR Anarouch desert quest/raid. (wasn't this part of the D&D relaunch storyline??)
kings forrest rares - not that i care but yes it needs to be here.

Things that were brought up or showing in game as broken or imcomplete and need to be fixed.

no reward for twelve favor at top tier
no reward for purple drag knight favor at top tier.
more comm rewards
von5 entrace/flag bug says you can't enter but you can
3bc can't pick up collectibles that drop


Things that dev discussed and we really want!
keep raid counters through heroic/iconicTR.

unknown?
stay at the inn - the barkeep bugs out at end and you can't finish quest.
heroic comm items - even after upgraded the full way it hints at another tier in future in description

Things that shouldn't be hard but are broken
...string table error all over the place

i know there is more that i can't remember as guild discusses this as we run around and hit stuff... hey remember when a dev promised to fix this...

[Oliphant]

The big mistake that will always hurt the game is creating the expansion idea that made VIPs pay and cut out folks that could've spent TP on packs but didn't have cash to buy. They've done a great job of keeping the game new and relevant and I think all the producers have contributed positively to the game lately. But splintering your already small community with new pay walls instantly and persistently trashed the multi-player aspect of the game, which is the only aspect that keeps me playing. The playerbase is getting really thin in Ghallanda lately. I don't need to spend time on a game just to log in, see no one is on, hear some depressing airship wind noise and then log off a bit depressed. That's not generally how I feel about the game but that's how I felt in January and didn't play much that month. The game itself is cool still but absent players, meh, I should probably just move on. I don't think this is about producers rotating. Probably its about a bad calculus that thought it would be worth it to make VIPs pay for FR licensing (and then still not advertise).

(I'm not VIP by the way but I depend on them to be around as we need every player we can get on G-land)

[IronClan]

The big mistake that will always hurt the game is creating the expansion idea that made VIPs pay and cut out folks that could've spent TP on packs but didn't have cash to buy. They've done a great job of keeping the game new and relevant and I think all the producers have contributed positively to the game lately. But splintering your already small community with new pay walls instantly and persistently trashed the multi-player aspect of the game, which is the only aspect that keeps me playing.

I think the main issue there could have been avoided... Epic Destinies cut out F2P players from Epics, they should have made this feature free and charged for the content, not the progression system. This was a bigger and more expensive Leveling Sigil just like 4200 Cov's was a major Leveling sigil effect

It seems that someone can't help but make the same leveling sigil mistake over and over.


The playerbase is getting really thin in Ghallanda lately. I don't need to spend time on a game just to log in, see no one is on, hear some depressing airship wind noise and then log off a bit depressed. That's not generally how I feel about the game but that's how I felt in January and didn't play much that month. The game itself is cool still but absent players, meh, I should probably just move on. I don't think this is about producers rotating. Probably its about a bad calculus that thought it would be worth it to make VIPs pay for FR licensing (and then still not advertise).

(I'm not VIP by the way but I depend on them to be around as we need every player we can get on G-land)

G-land was top population a few months ago, then they turned the newbie valve to Cannith or Sarlona whichever I'm not going to go look at it, and G-land fell back to earth.

The conclusion must be that new players do not keep playing DDO... there are a myriad of reasons why this might be, and contributing factors (harsh punishment for character building blunders (high cost to respec) high skill ceiling FPS movement, meta-gaming, complexity of D&D rules etc.) but my A#1 blame target is:

Elite For BB

being that Elite is the only LFM any new player is like to see 9 out of 10 LFM's (maybe more than that). E for BB is so Newbie hostile in my mind that nothing could possibly chase more new players out.

And yet the new producer expected new players to have choices of Normal LFM's to join, I'm not dogging Sev, he's new to DDO, this is a totally normal expectation on his part... it's not his fault, in fact it's a condemnation of the BB mechanic. Maybe some new players Solo HN, but a large number of people joining an MMO can reasonably be expected to desire groups and other people to play the game with especially as they are learning it. Hopefully his faux pas will get Turbine looking at the LFM metrics for heroics and they will see the overwhelming dominance of Elite BB LFM's.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

DDO has never been a successful game.

There seems to be a lot of hate about the turnover and the way the devs abandon systems. To me, that seems to be the thing that has kept DDO going while most other MMOs have folded under their own weight. DDO should have been closed down long ago, but it still carries on, likely because of WB's ability to actually run a business.


Doomed for nine years now.

[Braegan]

Doomed for nine years now.

And counting!