Mirta
10-19-2015, 03:19 PM
I left DDO Sep 2011 and returned August 16, 2015. Here is what I have seen since returning:
The content is great. I love the quests (especially raids) that have been released in the time I have been gone.
The lag is worse than ever. This game has always suffered from lag and I don’t expect this to change until Turbine actually puts serious effort into finding and looking at the faulty code that is causing this. This never seems to be priority, even though it is game breaking. It has always seemed like lag is caused by some inefficient programming loop that either causes an infinite loop or requires too many steps to be efficiently processed.
The server populations are lower than I have ever seen. Grouping is difficult because everything is just as easy to solo on EN/EH and there is no significant gains in doing EE unless you are doing BB. A merge would be nice. There is no advertising for DDO, and unless you are planning on making DDO2 you need to do something to attract new players.
Significant balancing is needed. I see the changes you are making, but those are not enough. Here is how I see the game in a balanced state (at level):
1. Normal/EN is for first/few lifers. A solo’er should be able to complete these with some effort, and a group should be able to dominate.
2. Hard/Elite/EH is for multi lifers. These are players who are geared, experienced, and have several past lives. A solo’er should be able to complete these with some effort, and a group should be able to dominate.
3. EE is for many lifers/completionists. These are for players who know the quest well, have great gear, and tons of past lives. A solo many lifer should be able to complete these with some effort/resources and great skill, and a group/completionist should be able to dominate.
4. Raids should be one step up from each of those difficulties where EE raids are nearly impossible for anybody to solo, extremely difficult for groups of non-completionists, and a group of completionists should be able to complete with some effort and resources.
Here is how the game is now (at level):
1. Normal through EH is easily solo’d by a first lifer in easy to acquire gear. Adding past lives makes it a little easier. Seriously. I came back with only level 20 toons wearing greensteel and trashed everything on EH while well below level.
2. EE is for groups of any variety and skilled players who have a few past lives.
3. EE raids are made difficult only by lag and one-hit kills.
People whine about the game being too difficult. People whine about the game being too easy. That is because of different player skills, and because nothing scales with level. Everything is overpowered in heroics because the enhancements are designed for endgame, but then the endgame is balanced for completionists. The enhancement lines for many classes are severely overpowered. The enhancements for some classes are so weak they make the entire class irrelevant to the game! Tons of immunities, major damage buffs, self-healing, etc. This is why the game bloats so fast and we end up with million hp bosses. I shouldn’t be ready for end game quests on EE after just a few weeks of being back from a long break, but I was.
The past lives and enhancements seem backwards. Enhancements (guaranteed through leveling) should grant minor bonuses that you pick and choose, and past lives (which are gained through repetitively grinding to cap) should be more powerful since they take more effort to get. The worst part of the current system is that when you need to do additional balancing to increase or decrease power you have to rework 14 classes’ entire lines of enhancements and people have to respec. Give us the same major bonuses (in the form of past lives) regardless of class, and let the enhancements be the fine tuning for each class.
The grind for past lives is currently not worth it. I grind hundreds of millions of XP for minor bonuses, but those are overshadowed by 10k hp trash mobs, 100k+ hp bosses with blanket immunities, and raid bosses with countless hp and full immunities to anything we can use. No amount of past lives will help my cleric/fighter/other classes and thus I don’t play them. Before I left I had 25 capped characters which were all played on a regular basis. Now I only play two because no grind could possibly make the others worth playing and there is no point in having multiples.
Moving on to loot: Loot sucks. You invalidate everything from previous mods by adding powerful new items which overshadow the previous loot. Random loot is the worst. You took all the valuable loot out of the tables and replaced it with generic garbage which is completely useless. Was nerfing vorpal really necessary? Everything already dies in under 20 hits on average so why bother? I understand removing things like tomes/mnemonics from the loot table was purely for ddo store profit, but give us something to look forward to in random loot. Adding non-binding items/gear with actual value could help to fix the economy. XP stones, timers, tomes of ability/skill/mp/sp/mrr/prr/etc. Putting everything valuable in the DDO store has murdered the economy and turned the game P2W. You really failed to balance the F2P/P2W thing.
Raid timers: Wow. Now I can farm what I need in a single day! These have really hurt raiding in the name of profit. Why run a raid on EE for better chance of loot when I can just do the raid EN 20 times in a day, get my loot, and never run it again?
Voice chat still sucks. There was better technology available when the game first came out, and we’re still using this lousy system. The sampling rate is so low that everybody sounds the same. We can’t create custom channels, and are stuck with only being able to chat with people in group. This is an MMO. Give us better social options!
Also, is there a timeline on healer/caster passes? I miss playing both of these.
The content is great. I love the quests (especially raids) that have been released in the time I have been gone.
The lag is worse than ever. This game has always suffered from lag and I don’t expect this to change until Turbine actually puts serious effort into finding and looking at the faulty code that is causing this. This never seems to be priority, even though it is game breaking. It has always seemed like lag is caused by some inefficient programming loop that either causes an infinite loop or requires too many steps to be efficiently processed.
The server populations are lower than I have ever seen. Grouping is difficult because everything is just as easy to solo on EN/EH and there is no significant gains in doing EE unless you are doing BB. A merge would be nice. There is no advertising for DDO, and unless you are planning on making DDO2 you need to do something to attract new players.
Significant balancing is needed. I see the changes you are making, but those are not enough. Here is how I see the game in a balanced state (at level):
1. Normal/EN is for first/few lifers. A solo’er should be able to complete these with some effort, and a group should be able to dominate.
2. Hard/Elite/EH is for multi lifers. These are players who are geared, experienced, and have several past lives. A solo’er should be able to complete these with some effort, and a group should be able to dominate.
3. EE is for many lifers/completionists. These are for players who know the quest well, have great gear, and tons of past lives. A solo many lifer should be able to complete these with some effort/resources and great skill, and a group/completionist should be able to dominate.
4. Raids should be one step up from each of those difficulties where EE raids are nearly impossible for anybody to solo, extremely difficult for groups of non-completionists, and a group of completionists should be able to complete with some effort and resources.
Here is how the game is now (at level):
1. Normal through EH is easily solo’d by a first lifer in easy to acquire gear. Adding past lives makes it a little easier. Seriously. I came back with only level 20 toons wearing greensteel and trashed everything on EH while well below level.
2. EE is for groups of any variety and skilled players who have a few past lives.
3. EE raids are made difficult only by lag and one-hit kills.
People whine about the game being too difficult. People whine about the game being too easy. That is because of different player skills, and because nothing scales with level. Everything is overpowered in heroics because the enhancements are designed for endgame, but then the endgame is balanced for completionists. The enhancement lines for many classes are severely overpowered. The enhancements for some classes are so weak they make the entire class irrelevant to the game! Tons of immunities, major damage buffs, self-healing, etc. This is why the game bloats so fast and we end up with million hp bosses. I shouldn’t be ready for end game quests on EE after just a few weeks of being back from a long break, but I was.
The past lives and enhancements seem backwards. Enhancements (guaranteed through leveling) should grant minor bonuses that you pick and choose, and past lives (which are gained through repetitively grinding to cap) should be more powerful since they take more effort to get. The worst part of the current system is that when you need to do additional balancing to increase or decrease power you have to rework 14 classes’ entire lines of enhancements and people have to respec. Give us the same major bonuses (in the form of past lives) regardless of class, and let the enhancements be the fine tuning for each class.
The grind for past lives is currently not worth it. I grind hundreds of millions of XP for minor bonuses, but those are overshadowed by 10k hp trash mobs, 100k+ hp bosses with blanket immunities, and raid bosses with countless hp and full immunities to anything we can use. No amount of past lives will help my cleric/fighter/other classes and thus I don’t play them. Before I left I had 25 capped characters which were all played on a regular basis. Now I only play two because no grind could possibly make the others worth playing and there is no point in having multiples.
Moving on to loot: Loot sucks. You invalidate everything from previous mods by adding powerful new items which overshadow the previous loot. Random loot is the worst. You took all the valuable loot out of the tables and replaced it with generic garbage which is completely useless. Was nerfing vorpal really necessary? Everything already dies in under 20 hits on average so why bother? I understand removing things like tomes/mnemonics from the loot table was purely for ddo store profit, but give us something to look forward to in random loot. Adding non-binding items/gear with actual value could help to fix the economy. XP stones, timers, tomes of ability/skill/mp/sp/mrr/prr/etc. Putting everything valuable in the DDO store has murdered the economy and turned the game P2W. You really failed to balance the F2P/P2W thing.
Raid timers: Wow. Now I can farm what I need in a single day! These have really hurt raiding in the name of profit. Why run a raid on EE for better chance of loot when I can just do the raid EN 20 times in a day, get my loot, and never run it again?
Voice chat still sucks. There was better technology available when the game first came out, and we’re still using this lousy system. The sampling rate is so low that everybody sounds the same. We can’t create custom channels, and are stuck with only being able to chat with people in group. This is an MMO. Give us better social options!
Also, is there a timeline on healer/caster passes? I miss playing both of these.