DDO Producer's Letter - September 2016

[Severlin]

I hope you've been enjoying Against the Slave Lords, checking out our new Cannith Crafting update, and helping us celebrate a decade of DDO! I'm writing today to talk about our plans for the rest of the year and beyond.

Our goal is to release two updates before the end of the year. One of the updates will be larger, the other smaller, and combined they'll bring several things that players have long asked for to DDO. Since we are currently working on two updates, it isn't clear yet what will be in each update. We'll release things when they are ready, so if something isn't ready in time for next month, we'll see if we can finalize it for the following update in December.

Here's the list of Things We’re Working On:

~ Updated Night Revels event: First up, we’re working on an update to The Night Revels, our Halloween-themed event which debuted last year. We’re planning to add a couple of new quests along with a handful of new items that will focus on cosmetic fun. We’re expecting the updated Night Revels to debut later in October.

~ A new Questing hub: We've long wanted to help people figure out where to go and what to do when they come back to DDO from some time away, and this hub will help both them as well as anyone who'd like to get to quest entrances more quickly. We don't have a name for this new system yet, and we'll be talking a lot more about it in the coming weeks.

~ World Character Transfers: We've heard from many of you that our process to transfer characters from one world to another needs to be more intuitive and take less time. Our new launcher-based system will send a character or characters from one world to another in seconds, and players will be able to pay for their transfers directly with Turbine Points. We think you'll like this transfer system, which is already in place in our sister game Lord of the Rings Online. Expect to see it debut by the end of the year.

~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.

~ A new free dungeon: We’re expecting to release a new free dungeon in December that we think fans of A Study in Sable will enjoy. This quest sends adventurers to a popular type of pen and paper location that hasn’t had much representation in DDO. I’d say more, but I don’t want to spoil it.

~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

~ Monks and Favored Soul updates: Continuing our class work, you can expect an overhaul of handwraps in addition to updated enhancement trees for both classes.

Looking beyond 2016, we know many of you have been hearing the rumors and teases about Ravenloft, so let's talk Strahd. We're 100% interested in bringing Ravenloft to DDO, and are working through the process to make it happen. We don't have an exact time frame in mind, although our current plan has it coming to DDO sometime towards the end of 2017. We can't wait to bring one of the most popular and classic adventures in Dungeons & Dragons history to the game.

We’re also planning for our 11th anniversary in late February! We’re hoping to debut a new playable race for the anniversary along with some new adventuring. We’ve been asking you whether you’d like to play a kobold or dragonborn, and while the final decision hasn’t been made, it looks like many of you would enjoy the dragonborn, so we’ll see what the anniversary brings.

It remains an honor to be your Executive Producer, and I'll be back later this year to look ahead to 2017. Until next time, may the loot gods smile on you.

~ Sev

[apocaladle]

neat

[Enderoc]

All these proposed changes are music to most people's ears I would say.

Despite a lot of negativity that people who have familiarized themselves by the old systems have been expressing, I think all of the development being done has been on key to a better DDO experience.

[Hoglum]

I hope you've been enjoying Against the Slave Lords,

~ Sev


Yes, very nice, thank you! I love seeing D&D modules coming to life in DDO!

White Plume Mountain would be cool.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-keuIH7BGA7o/Tcn810nvvsI/AAAAAAAADMw/G1tufWtsQgE/s1600/wpm.jpg

[Memnir]

http://i.imgur.com/kLeDwz8.gif

[Livmo]

Allot win woot woot!

[mezzorco]

Today I was asking myself if a bear druid overhaul, coupled with a wildshape+handwraps fix, was near.
Well, handwraps are a step in the good direction.

[Splunge]

Thanks for posting a new producer's letter. It's always fun to hear about the plans for DDO.


~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.


While it would be nice to have more character bank storage, I'd rather keep what we have than have it replaced with the current shared bank interface. I use the tabs to sort my stuff. Yes, I can search for items in the shared bank interface, but I can only search by name. That doesn't help me when I pull things out of my TR cache and store them in my character bank by ML so that they're easier to find when I level up. It also doesn't help if I'm working through a few epic past lives and store my level 26 gear set in one tab so that it's really easy to swap gear when I hit level 26. It also doesn't allow me to put certain "important" items in the first tab so that I always see them when I open the bank. It also doesn't allow me to put items that I'll no longer use this life on a separate tab so that I don't have to bother looking through them when I'm searching for something.

Of course, the best option would be if you improve the shared storage interface before changing the personal bank storage to use it. Here are a few things that could be improved with the shared bank interface:

- There's no easy way to move items around in the list.

- Paging through the shared crafting storage can be slow and painful. I have about 30 pages, and I sometimes use it to move items among toons. The last items added go at the end of the list, and it isn't always easy to search for them.

- Adding new sorting methods (ML, item type, reverse time order, etc.) would make it easier to use.

- Adding new search methods (ML, item type, item attributes, etc.) would make it easier to use.

- Having subdirectories in the storage that we can rename would really help with keeping things sorted and easy to find.

[Krelar]

~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.


I suspect I understand why you are doing this but I hate that you are taking the interface I like (character bank) and changing it to the one I hate (shared bank).

My character bank has all the tabs nicely organized so I can quickly find the items I'm looking for. Most of the time I'm looking for all the items of a certain ML range so searching in the shared bank is nowhere near as useful as being able to pick the order things are in. Meanwhile I will have put all items of the same ML on the same tab in my character bank making it easy to find what I'm looking for.

That said the shared bank interface would be somewhat more useful if it listed the most recent items first instead of the oldest, and if I didn't have to scroll AND go to other pages. (It should be one or the other not both).

[RobbinB]

~ World Character Transfers: We've heard from many of you that our process to transfer characters from one world to another needs to be more intuitive and take less time. Our new launcher-based system will send a character or characters from one world to another in seconds, and players will be able to pay for their transfers directly with Turbine Points. We think you'll like this transfer system, which is already in place in our sister game Lord of the Rings Online. Expect to see it debut by the end of the year.


This seems really cool. Is there any way for me to tell if my toons name is already taken on another server, prior to actually transferring it? For example, I have 3 toons named Chulka, Pulka, and Dulka. I want to transfer all 3 or none at all, without having to change a name. Can I somehow check if those names are taken on the servers I might consider transfering to?

[Steve_Howe]

~ Monks and Favored Soul updates: Continuing our class work, you can expect an overhaul of handwraps in addition to updated enhancement trees for both classes.



My favorite part. Yay!

[Cordovan]

This seems really cool. Is there any way for me to tell if my toons name is already taken on another server, prior to actually transferring it? For example, I have 3 toons named Chulka, Pulka, and Dulka. I want to transfer all 3 or none at all, without having to change a name. Can I somehow check if those names are taken on the servers I might consider transfering to?

My understanding is the transfer system itself doesn't have a check on it, but you could log into the world and attempt to create a character with the name if it's a concern. Of course you'll then want to delete the character prior to transferring.

[daboyz]

Returning players can always use as much help as possible to get back up to speed. Any love thrown their way is much appreciated. There is no game like this game, it is haunting.

[DagazUlf]

Just a "thumbs-up" here. Move along.

[glmfw1]

Kobold

[Thalmor]

My understanding is the transfer system itself doesn't have a check on it, but you could log into the world and attempt to create a character with the name if it's a concern. Of course you'll then want to delete the character prior to transferring.

You could just search for the name by trying to add as a friend.

[R1ncewind]

~ A new free dungeon: We’re expecting to release a new free dungeon in December that we think fans of A Study in Sable will enjoy. This quest sends adventurers to a popular type of pen and paper location that hasn’t had much representation in DDO. I’d say more, but I don’t want to spoil it.

~ Sev

I hope it's a BIG dungeon, because its seems lackluster.

On another topic, Sev any chance to start working on a random generated dungeon for end game, with ingredients as rewards ( so you can update the rewards if new content appears), you can even take some old dungeons ( maybe even mixing part of them) with random mobs on it , specially champions with new random abilities, to keep the game alive in between updates, something that works mostly as a challenge with some useful reward.

[changelingamuck]

While it would be nice to have more character bank storage, I'd rather keep what we have than have it replaced with the current shared bank interface. I use the tabs to sort my stuff. Yes, I can search for items in the shared bank interface, but I can only search by name. That doesn't help me when I pull things out of my TR cache and store them in my character bank by ML so that they're easier to find when I level up.

This is also my concern about such a UI change.

[alancarp]

~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

With the epic levels, I would dearly love to have much more shared bank space. Been maxed out for a couple of years. Heck, more _character_ bank space would likewise be welcomed and quickly purchased.

[gravisrs]

~ World Character Transfers: We've heard from many of you that our process to transfer characters from one world to another needs to be more intuitive and take less time. Our new launcher-based system will send a character or characters from one world to another in seconds, and players will be able to pay for their transfers directly with Turbine Points. We think you'll like this transfer system, which is already in place in our sister game Lord of the Rings Online. Expect to see it debut by the end of the year.

~ Sev

Since this procedure won't involve a human resource anymore - will it be cheaper ? :)

[Bolo_Grubb]

focus on cosmetic fun.



It remains an honor to be your executive producer, and i'll be back later this year to look ahead to 2017. Until next time, may the loot gods smile on you.

~ sev

woot!

[Ziindarax]

I hope you've been enjoying Against the Slave Lords, checking out our new Cannith Crafting update, and helping us celebrate a decade of DDO! I'm writing today to talk about our plans for the rest of the year and beyond.

Our goal is to release two updates before the end of the year. One of the updates will be larger, the other smaller, and combined they'll bring several things that players have long asked for to DDO. Since we are currently working on two updates, it isn't clear yet what will be in each update. We'll release things when they are ready, so if something isn't ready in time for next month, we'll see if we can finalize it for the following update in December.

Here's the list of Things We’re Working On:

~ Updated Night Revels event: First up, we’re working on an update to The Night Revels, our Halloween-themed event which debuted last year. We’re planning to add a couple of new quests along with a handful of new items that will focus on cosmetic fun. We’re expecting the updated Night Revels to debut later in October.

~ A new Questing hub: We've long wanted to help people figure out where to go and what to do when they come back to DDO from some time away, and this hub will help both them as well as anyone who'd like to get to quest entrances more quickly. We don't have a name for this new system yet, and we'll be talking a lot more about it in the coming weeks.

~ World Character Transfers: We've heard from many of you that our process to transfer characters from one world to another needs to be more intuitive and take less time. Our new launcher-based system will send a character or characters from one world to another in seconds, and players will be able to pay for their transfers directly with Turbine Points. We think you'll like this transfer system, which is already in place in our sister game Lord of the Rings Online. Expect to see it debut by the end of the year.

~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.

~ A new free dungeon: We’re expecting to release a new free dungeon in December that we think fans of A Study in Sable will enjoy. This quest sends adventurers to a popular type of pen and paper location that hasn’t had much representation in DDO. I’d say more, but I don’t want to spoil it.

~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

~ Monks and Favored Soul updates: Continuing our class work, you can expect an overhaul of handwraps in addition to updated enhancement trees for both classes.

Looking beyond 2016, we know many of you have been hearing the rumors and teases about Ravenloft, so let's talk Strahd. We're 100% interested in bringing Ravenloft to DDO, and are working through the process to make it happen. We don't have an exact time frame in mind, although our current plan has it coming to DDO sometime towards the end of 2017. We can't wait to bring one of the most popular and classic adventures in Dungeons & Dragons history to the game.

We’re also planning for our 11th anniversary in late February! We’re hoping to debut a new playable race for the anniversary along with some new adventuring. We’ve been asking you whether you’d like to play a kobold or dragonborn, and while the final decision hasn’t been made, it looks like many of you would enjoy the dragonborn, so we’ll see what the anniversary brings.

It remains an honor to be your Executive Producer, and I'll be back later this year to look ahead to 2017. Until next time, may the loot gods smile on you.

~ Sev

These all look fantastic! :)

Hoping to play dragonborn.

[cru121]

~ World Character Transfers: We've heard from many of you that our process to transfer characters from one world to another needs to be more intuitive and take less time. Our new launcher-based system will send a character or characters from one world to another in seconds, and players will be able to pay for their transfers directly with Turbine Points. We think you'll like this transfer system, which is already in place in our sister game Lord of the Rings Online. Expect to see it debut by the end of the year.


If the transfer technology is so streamlined that it only takes seconds... why not implement free temporary transfers?
1) make global LFM panel available from the launcher.
2) allow players to log with a character directly to any server.
3) restrict trading of visiting characters if you're worried about global economy.

[Eleannore]

~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.




Will Forgotten Realms deities like Mystra or Gond be included as well?

[FranOhmsford]

~ World Character Transfers: We've heard from many of you that our process to transfer characters from one world to another needs to be more intuitive and take less time. Our new launcher-based system will send a character or characters from one world to another in seconds, and players will be able to pay for their transfers directly with Turbine Points. We think you'll like this transfer system, which is already in place in our sister game Lord of the Rings Online. Expect to see it debut by the end of the year.

At £20 a Pop even if it's able to be bought with TP it will still be too expensive for many.

And honestly with the amount of alts around I think you'd get a lot more sales out of this by halving the cost or even more.


~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.

FINALLY!

Please give us:
Moradin


~ A new free dungeon: We’re expecting to release a new free dungeon in December that we think fans of A Study in Sable will enjoy. This quest sends adventurers to a popular type of pen and paper location that hasn’t had much representation in DDO. I’d say more, but I don’t want to spoil it.

The problem with the likes of Study in Sable is that it's a great one off dungeon but the replay value is very low! I personally have maybe ran this 3 or 4 times since it came out and I don't dislike it!


~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

Partly good, partly bad - I like the Tab System and if you're going to change to a Shared Bank Style System then can we PLEASE get a Page Search Option?

Because the current system of turning the page in the Shared Bank is massively annoying - Especially when you have to go through 15 pages in the Crafting Bank, ONE AT A TIME!


~ Monks and Favored Soul updates: Continuing our class work, you can expect an overhaul of handwraps in addition to updated enhancement trees for both classes.

Long overdue for both of these - Nice to hear they'll be done by the end of the year and just maybe you can look at Clerics first thing next year?



We’re also planning for our 11th anniversary in late February! We’re hoping to debut a new playable race for the anniversary along with some new adventuring. We’ve been asking you whether you’d like to play a kobold or dragonborn, and while the final decision hasn’t been made, it looks like many of you would enjoy the dragonborn, so we’ll see what the anniversary brings.

I personally hate the very idea of Dragonborn.

And I find the Bait and Switch with teasing us about FINALLY getting Kobolds only to take them away like this to be repugnant!

[FranOhmsford]

Will Forgotten Realms deities like Mystra or Gond be included as well?

Uh....Isn't Mystra dead in the DDO timeline?

Isn't that why Anna is the Thread of the Weave?

[Saekee]

thx Sev!
Consider our various forum threads on Night Revels for inspiration.

Not sure what to make of the Hub--is this anti-immersion?

[Vaidan]

Any news on when we will see arti's update? They still have only two trees, one of which is seriously outdated.

[Ziindarax]

Uh....Isn't Mystra dead in the DDO timeline?

Isn't that why Anna is the Thread of the Weave?

5th Edition retconned her death, and restored her as the Goddess of Magic. Basically, 5th Edition undid all the changes that 4th edition made to the lore.

[DeliaKelodin]

Will Forgotten Realms deities like Mystra or Gond be included as well?

Math Mathonwy. Lolth (give Drow a Dragonmark). Garl Glittergold. Deities. All of them from 2nd Edition Legends & Lore and Monster Mythology please!

[Zistra]

While it would be nice to have more character bank storage, I'd rather keep what we have than have it replaced with the current shared bank interface. I use the tabs to sort my stuff. Yes, I can search for items in the shared bank interface, but I can only search by name. That doesn't help me when I pull things out of my TR cache and store them in my character bank by ML so that they're easier to find when I level up. It also doesn't help if I'm working through a few epic past lives and store my level 26 gear set in one tab so that it's really easy to swap gear when I hit level 26. It also doesn't allow me to put certain "important" items in the first tab so that I always see them when I open the bank. It also doesn't allow me to put items that I'll no longer use this life on a separate tab so that I don't have to bother looking through them when I'm searching for something.

Of course, the best option would be if you improve the shared storage interface before changing the personal bank storage to use it. Here are a few things that could be improved with the shared bank interface:

- There's no easy way to move items around in the list.

- Paging through the shared crafting storage can be slow and painful. I have about 30 pages, and I sometimes use it to move items among toons. The last items added go at the end of the list, and it isn't always easy to search for them.

- Adding new sorting methods (ML, item type, reverse time order, etc.) would make it easier to use.

- Adding new search methods (ML, item type, item attributes, etc.) would make it easier to use.

- Having subdirectories in the storage that we can rename would really help with keeping things sorted and easy to find.

All of this. Of course, the worst storage is the TR cache, with neither tabs nor sorting. But ideally, I'd love to have searchable, sortable, and groupable (folders) as criteria for all the storage methods. And if I just dump my green bag into the shared crafting storage, it would be awesome if it were able to sort the contents into the places I've put their like. At the very least, to add item 'x' to the stack of that item in a subfolder. (Also would want to be able to rename the subfolders). The paging system in shared crafting storage is annoying and awkward. Please don't duplicate it. I actually prefer the single long list in the TR cache.

[Steve_Howe]

Uh....Isn't Mystra dead in the DDO timeline?

Isn't that why Anna is the Thread of the Weave?

1. Mystra is back!

2. Anna hosted a portion of Mystra'a power (and some say a portion of Mystra herself). Anna did not become the "new" Mystra. She just hosted a portion so Mystra didn't truly die.

Read the six book series called "The Sundering" starting with "The Companions" and ending with "The Herald."

[DeliaKelodin]

All of this. Of course, the worst storage is the TR cache, with neither tabs nor sorting. But ideally, I'd love to have searchable, sortable, and groupable (folders) as criteria for all the storage methods. And if I just dump my green bag into the shared crafting storage, it would be awesome if it were able to sort the contents into the places I've put their like. At the very least, to add item 'x' to the stack of that item in a subfolder. (Also would want to be able to rename the subfolders). The paging system in shared crafting storage is annoying and awkward. Please don't duplicate it. I actually prefer the single long list in the TR cache.

I think sometimes I spend more time in TR cache and other storage than actual questing!

[Dieterstein]

For the bank change, I'd echo others' concerns. I'd guess a fair number of players are a little OCD in terms of how they keep their items organized. As it stands, the shared bank doesn't allow any organization to it, short of manually pulling out and putting back in a particular order which is tedious at best. Even if you could add up/down arrows like are in the quivers, it would still be annoying to get things where you want them. Hopefully you have some new organizational scheme in mind or there could be many aggravated players...

[zrselier]

No more undead.
No more heroic undead.
No more epic undead,
And please no legendary undead.

We have the necropolis, the orchard, Delaras, a lich dragon, and a vampire god, just to name a few.

Please do something different, new, exciting, but please stop rehashing undead.

[Steuern]

"We’re hoping to debut a new playable race for the anniversary along with some new adventuring. We’ve been asking you whether you’d like to play a kobold or dragonborn, and while the final decision hasn’t been made, it looks like many of you would enjoy the dragonborn, so we’ll see what the anniversary brings."


No no no no, Kobold please! Not dragonborn! D:

[Zistra]

First, I still hate that you implemented prefix, suffix and extra slot restrictions in Cannith crafting. The new system was supposed to be easier and more intuitive. It isn't. I understand limiting which gear slots can have which effects (and it's nice to be able to view that before creating a shard). However, it seems to me that prefixes and suffixes just add unnecessary complication without adding value. It would be much simpler to plan an item if you could just look for 2 (or 3) effects that could go on the same piece of gear. Why do you care what combinations we can devise? It's not a power issue, because the power of the effects is the same.

Second, there's no indication of at what ML an "Insightful" shard begins to provide a bonus. I created an Insightful Search shard and tried to apply it to a pair of ML7 gloves and all I got was "no recipes found". I assume that's because Insightful Search provides no bonus until some higher ML.

Third, there's no way in-game to see the power of a level-dependent shard until you create it and apply it to a piece of gear. This means, for example, I can't tell whether the Combustion shard I'm about to install on a piece of L27 gear will provide more benefit than some other piece of Combustion gear I might already have without investing the materials. Or whether it's worthwhile bothering to add an "Insightful Combustion" shard on the extra slot.

[kmoustakas]

It all sounds wonderful

[JOTMON]

I hope you've been enjoying Against the Slave Lords, checking out our new Cannith Crafting update, and helping us celebrate a decade of DDO! I'm writing today to talk about our plans for the rest of the year and beyond.

Our goal is to release two updates before the end of the year. One of the updates will be larger, the other smaller, and combined they'll bring several things that players have long asked for to DDO. Since we are currently working on two updates, it isn't clear yet what will be in each update. We'll release things when they are ready, so if something isn't ready in time for next month, we'll see if we can finalize it for the following update in December.

Here's the list of Things We’re Working On:

~ Updated Night Revels event: First up, we’re working on an update to The Night Revels, our Halloween-themed event which debuted last year. We’re planning to add a couple of new quests along with a handful of new items that will focus on cosmetic fun. We’re expecting the updated Night Revels to debut later in October.

~ A new Questing hub: We've long wanted to help people figure out where to go and what to do when they come back to DDO from some time away, and this hub will help both them as well as anyone who'd like to get to quest entrances more quickly. We don't have a name for this new system yet, and we'll be talking a lot more about it in the coming weeks.

~ World Character Transfers: We've heard from many of you that our process to transfer characters from one world to another needs to be more intuitive and take less time. Our new launcher-based system will send a character or characters from one world to another in seconds, and players will be able to pay for their transfers directly with Turbine Points. We think you'll like this transfer system, which is already in place in our sister game Lord of the Rings Online. Expect to see it debut by the end of the year.

~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.

~ A new free dungeon: We’re expecting to release a new free dungeon in December that we think fans of A Study in Sable will enjoy. This quest sends adventurers to a popular type of pen and paper location that hasn’t had much representation in DDO. I’d say more, but I don’t want to spoil it.

~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

~ Monks and Favored Soul updates: Continuing our class work, you can expect an overhaul of handwraps in addition to updated enhancement trees for both classes.

Looking beyond 2016, we know many of you have been hearing the rumors and teases about Ravenloft, so let's talk Strahd. We're 100% interested in bringing Ravenloft to DDO, and are working through the process to make it happen. We don't have an exact time frame in mind, although our current plan has it coming to DDO sometime towards the end of 2017. We can't wait to bring one of the most popular and classic adventures in Dungeons & Dragons history to the game.

We’re also planning for our 11th anniversary in late February! We’re hoping to debut a new playable race for the anniversary along with some new adventuring. We’ve been asking you whether you’d like to play a kobold or dragonborn, and while the final decision hasn’t been made, it looks like many of you would enjoy the dragonborn, so we’ll see what the anniversary brings.

It remains an honor to be your Executive Producer, and I'll be back later this year to look ahead to 2017. Until next time, may the loot gods smile on you.

~ Sev

So far so good..
Slavers content is fun, traps hurt, great set bonus worthy of the grind
The individual exploding traps are a good way to damage.. many small hits lots of fails... much better than 1 big trap... Magnetic trap(lol's)..
some tweaking would be nice.. block disable traps.. disabling rogues/artificers are screwed crawling along individually doing 8-packs of traps every 50' of corridor.. while everyone else runs past/rezzes on the other side...
after half a dozen runs even the rogues are just skipping traps... rez scrolls are cheaper...



~Questing Hub... Harry Potter Hall of Portals for the Ministry of magic..
http://ww4.hdnux.com/photos/11/10/42/2394243/5/920x920.jpg
that links to...
https://az616578.vo.msecnd.net/files/2016/03/13/635935023107854511-830689856_toilet.gif

Would like to see strategically placed transport guides.. scouts, escorts, dragomen.. whatever you want to call them.. a public neutered version of the planescaller.. they get you to a destination quickly.. for a price of course...

~World character transfers.. still lacking..
Account Transfer, Guildship Transfer, all storage transfer...

~Deity feats...
Sounds like you are gimping on what should be done here.. a couple deity specific feats is really kind of pointless... sure we can always use more feat choices.. but it sounds like you are missing the point...
Deity Pacts for Clerics that mirror the setup for Warlocks.. that's what we are looking for...

~a new free Dungeopn..
Just one?...doom... we need content....

~Character bank storage..
There is a need for a better system.. hope you are up to the task of a serious revamp...What we have now.. ugh....
I would want to see a AH style interface and setup that lets me search/sort/filter.. and all the other category mechanics the AH interface has..

~Monks & FVS..
we have been waiting a long time....

~Ravenloft Expansion..
sure.. it means content.. and we want content....

~11th Anniversary..
Would of expected to see Tiefling and Aasimar long before Koboldsand or Dragonborn.. but somehow these are not options or even on the drawaing board?
Kobold/Dragonborn cosmetic skins for players and pets probably would have sufficed for the birthday event...
but I guess its something more than we have ..so ok...

[Steve_Howe]

~11th Anniversary..
Would of expected to see Tiefling and Aasimar long before Koboldsand or Dragonborn.. but somehow these are not options or even on the drawaing board?


I would like to know this as well.

[Zistra]

I think sometimes I spend more time in TR cache and other storage than actual questing!

If you have any bank toons, that might actually be true.

[ThomasHunter]

This is exciting as always. I'm only a bit anxious about the Ravenloft setting. I only know it involved UNDEAD and I'm pretty tired of that in many ways. Plus, this makes my Rogue shudder. Heh.

Hopefully we get more than undead in Ravenloft!

Thanks! I am enjoying the new dungeons as "dungeons", but not as "incredibly awful crazy number of times I have to repeat them" dungeons for my many toons.

Enjoy!
Taleisin

[axel15810]

Forgive me if this comes off as negative, I'm just attempting to give blunt and honest feedback -

So we're only getting 1 new quest the rest of the year? That's really disappointing. I was hoping for a big holiday update with some new raids like we got last year. And assuming the two proposed updates hit in october and december, we're probably going to be see the first update in 2017 drop in februrary or march. So we're stuck with only 1 new quest in 6 months? And over an entire year without any new raids? :( I hope there's some content stuff not included in this letter.

A lot of that quality of life stuff is nice but I don't care much about it personally. I'd definitely give up an overhaul on quest panel and bank panels if it meant we get a new raid or two. Or more new quests and new adventure areas.

As a player what I want most is 3 new quests every 3 months and a new raid every 6 months at least. So that's my feedback.

And another new race? Come on Devs, lets balance the races we already have before you do that. How can you introduce another new race when the existing racial trees are in such bad shape balance-wise? I know you're likely doing it because it's a good money maker and you have to keep the lights on which I understand, but still. There's so many races already in DDO with almost no reason to use them. The races are so crazily unbalanced. We have 14 playable races and 2/3rds of them atleast are bascally obsolete.

[Thar]

When might we see some enhancement overall love for Clerics/Druids?

Agree with the above, more quests/raids would be nice. at least a new quest an update. event upgrade is nice but it's gone in a week or two.

[Steve_Howe]

I think sometimes I spend more time in TR cache and other storage than actual questing!

This great game within the game is called Inventory Tetris™

[Dungeoner49]

Any news on when we will see arti's update? They still have only two trees, one of which is seriously outdated.

Honestly, what ever they do to arti, it should be something to help with epic content as rune arms are their main source of dps. And yes, I know that arti is a bit OP for early to mid game, but they seem like they launching pebbles by hand in epics. In epics my pure elf ranger gets 15-35% of the kills in compared to my pure wf arti getting 5 kills that would be other's if I'm lucky.

Anyway, dragonborn also is a sarcastic term used by non-kobolds for kobolds, at least in D&D's and DDO's lore. I hope that monks get the love they need, very few monks I've seen use earth stances, and the light monks complain of the light clicky enhancements not counting toward finishers.

[Enoach]

~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.


~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.



All the rest sounds good, but I wanted to touch on a few things with these two that I really hope Turbine keeps in mind.

On the Deity feats, I hope this is both selectable Deities for all races as well as expanding on the Favored Weapon.

On the storage aspect I hope this is including the TR Cache. While I liked the Tabbed interface of the Kundarak Bank I also feel that a few enhancements to the interface (which will work for all tabs) would help make sorting/finding easier

1. Sort, By Name or By Minimum Level
Sorting by name should use Minimum Level as its secondary sort and sorting by Minimum Level should use the Name as a secondary sort

2. Add a way to jump to a page. Sometimes you just want to jump to page 9 of 22 (Could see this as a number entry box). Or if anything provide a Jump to First and Last Page and a 5 page Jump in either direction

But even without the above if TR Cache is part of this change it will be a great improvement as the TR Cache searching has been the biggest thorn in players side.

[Uska]

Character transfers, monks, FVS, questing hub and free quest sounds awesome the rest sounds pretty much awful

[Uska]

Yes, very nice, thank you! I love seeing D&D modules coming to life in DDO!

White Plume Mountain would be cool.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-keuIH7BGA7o/Tcn810nvvsI/AAAAAAAADMw/G1tufWtsQgE/s1600/wpm.jpg

Wouldn't expect much but it is one of my faves and one they might get closer to right.

[Gondandur]

~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.
~ Sev

This is a great idea, I think this part of role playing as been discarded for too much time.



~ Monks and Favored Soul updates: Continuing our class work, you can expect an overhaul of handwraps in addition to updated enhancement trees for both classes.
~ Sev

I hope you will work also on a healing focused druid tree soon or later. Healers need more love and you should make the game more balanced in order to incentivate players to group together to cover all roles.

[Zebedar]

I hope you've been enjoying Against the Slave Lords, checking out our new Cannith Crafting update, and helping us celebrate a decade of DDO! I'm writing today to talk about our plans for the rest of the year and beyond.

Our goal is to release two updates before the end of the year. One of the updates will be larger, the other smaller, and combined they'll bring several things that players have long asked for to DDO. Since we are currently working on two updates, it isn't clear yet what will be in each update. We'll release things when they are ready, so if something isn't ready in time for next month, we'll see if we can finalize it for the following update in December.

Here's the list of Things We’re Working On:

~ Updated Night Revels event: First up, we’re working on an update to The Night Revels, our Halloween-themed event which debuted last year. We’re planning to add a couple of new quests along with a handful of new items that will focus on cosmetic fun. We’re expecting the updated Night Revels to debut later in October.

~ A new Questing hub: We've long wanted to help people figure out where to go and what to do when they come back to DDO from some time away, and this hub will help both them as well as anyone who'd like to get to quest entrances more quickly. We don't have a name for this new system yet, and we'll be talking a lot more about it in the coming weeks.

~ World Character Transfers: We've heard from many of you that our process to transfer characters from one world to another needs to be more intuitive and take less time. Our new launcher-based system will send a character or characters from one world to another in seconds, and players will be able to pay for their transfers directly with Turbine Points. We think you'll like this transfer system, which is already in place in our sister game Lord of the Rings Online. Expect to see it debut by the end of the year.

~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.

~ A new free dungeon: We’re expecting to release a new free dungeon in December that we think fans of A Study in Sable will enjoy. This quest sends adventurers to a popular type of pen and paper location that hasn’t had much representation in DDO. I’d say more, but I don’t want to spoil it.

~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

~ Monks and Favored Soul updates: Continuing our class work, you can expect an overhaul of handwraps in addition to updated enhancement trees for both classes.

Looking beyond 2016, we know many of you have been hearing the rumors and teases about Ravenloft, so let's talk Strahd. We're 100% interested in bringing Ravenloft to DDO, and are working through the process to make it happen. We don't have an exact time frame in mind, although our current plan has it coming to DDO sometime towards the end of 2017. We can't wait to bring one of the most popular and classic adventures in Dungeons & Dragons history to the game.

We’re also planning for our 11th anniversary in late February! We’re hoping to debut a new playable race for the anniversary along with some new adventuring. We’ve been asking you whether you’d like to play a kobold or dragonborn, and while the final decision hasn’t been made, it looks like many of you would enjoy the dragonborn, so we’ll see what the anniversary brings.

It remains an honor to be your Executive Producer, and I'll be back later this year to look ahead to 2017. Until next time, may the loot gods smile on you.

~ Sev


STOP. STOP NOW. Seriously, that all sounds great but you HAVE to get DDO's house in order before you open up anymore cans of worms Sev.

FIX THE BUGS, ATTEND TO THE KNOWN ISSUES LIST AND IT'S MANY YEARS OLD BUGS BEFORE ANY MORE CONTENT. YOU SAID YOU WOULD HAVE THE TEAM 'BUGSMASH', KEEP YOUR WORD AND FIX THE BUGS FIRST!

[fedula]

The game continues to be fun for me after all these years. Sev - you and your team are doing a great job!
Thanks & keep it up!

[Bozone]

All of this is great. While some of it is not too important to me personally, I know there are a fair number of players that will benefit and have waited for some of these things for a long time. Being a casual player I'm pretty easy to satisfy. This is already a great game and more than six years after starting playing I haven't fully explored everything it has.

But there is one thing I'm skeptical about:



~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

Improved look? I guess, maybe. Improved functionality? I think you and I have different definitions of functionality. I agree with those above who prefer using the current character bank tabs to the shared bank. It's a pain to find things in the shared bank. I only have 60 slots in my shared bank because if I bought more it would just mean having to tab and scroll more and a harder time to find what I'm looking for. I'm always short on storage it seems, but I dislike the shared bank UI enough that I don't consider buying more an option. If there aren't improved organization/sorting/searching methods included in this change, please reconsider. Hopefully, you just didn't mention the shared bank UI improvements you plan in this brief summary.

[PacmanJones]

What I don't like is that you absolutely NEED to farm the low level missions to get the exp you need to level up. What I would like to see is a new, updated Korthos for TR's that focuses on giving more exp so your only option isn't to farm. Granted farming is great and all, but when it's your only option for getting your character leveled up, its a little silly. Like leave the current Korthos for characters that are brand new to the game and learning it, but another low-level area for TR'ing characters. But that's just me. :cool:

[sbeehre]

On the storage aspect I hope this is including the TR Cache. While I liked the Tabbed interface of the Kundarak Bank I also feel that a few enhancements to the interface (which will work for all tabs) would help make sorting/finding easier

1. Sort, By Name or By Minimum Level
Sorting by name should use Minimum Level as its secondary sort and sorting by Minimum Level should use the Name as a secondary sort



Yep sorting would be excellent! LoTRO has is so why cant we?

[Zebedar]

Fix the bugs first.

[Zebedar]

My understanding is the transfer system itself doesn't have a check on it, but you could log into the world and attempt to create a character with the name if it's a concern. Of course you'll then want to delete the character prior to transferring.

#fixthebugs1st

[Faltout]

~ A new Questing hub: We've long wanted to help people figure out where to go and what to do when they come back to DDO from some time away, and this hub will help both them as well as anyone who'd like to get to quest entrances more quickly. We don't have a name for this new system yet, and we'll be talking a lot more about it in the coming weeks.
I hope that means you'll include the location of the quest in the quest journal or the adventure compendium and will not teleport players directly to the quest entrance...


~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.
More space is nice, but the "improved look and functionality" is simply NOT TRUE. As other posters have mentioned, the paging system of the shared bank and crafting storage is awful. You can't sort items, you can't look fast for a familiar icon.

At least I hope that the other inventory view (the lists by type) will not vanish.

The other stuff looks good (well, except night revels, unless you're bringing the summoning chamber as a raid)

My understanding is the transfer system itself doesn't have a check on it, but you could log into the world and attempt to create a character with the name if it's a concern. Of course you'll then want to delete the character prior to transferring.
But... but... if the system doesn't have a check on it, then doesn't that screw your whole ID system? If a player manages a transfer and the name already exists then wouldn't there be 2 players with the same name in that server? How would EVERYTHING work (mails, parties, loot, tells, etc.)?
And if the transfer doesn't go through, then why can't that player know beforehand? Or why not add a name change to the price and prompt a name change in case the name exists?

[Xanthrawl]

~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.
~ Sev

This is great news. When can we expect the additional character Bank storage space to be available?

My main is on his final life for triple completionist, at 30 and ready to TR again.

My next goals are to collect all raid loot in the game, as well as all seals, shards, and scrolls from the old epic loot (no room to actually make them, just want to have them in my bags.) This is currently not possible, unless I delete things like green steel, event items, etc.

Unless there are more past lives added, the only thing I really care about is BtC storage space. I'll gladly pay for the upgrades, but more space is needed pretty soon if I am to remain an active player.

[Hipparan]

~11th Anniversary..
Would of expected to see Tiefling and Aasimar long before Koboldsand or Dragonborn.. but somehow these are not options or even on the drawaing board?
Kobold/Dragonborn cosmetic skins for players and pets probably would have sufficed for the birthday event...
but I guess its something more than we have ..so ok...


I would like to know this as well.

Severlin mentioned in the last producer's letter that Aasimar and Tiefling would show up far in the future, so we will probably be getting three races next year. I know Tiefling tails and horns have been something the devs have thought about, so it could be that Dragonborn/Kobold are being released as a test to see what can be done about tails and horns showing through armor or not.

[Thar]

STOP. STOP NOW. Seriously, that all sounds great but you HAVE to get DDO's house in order before you open up anymore cans of worms Sev.

FIX THE BUGS, ATTEND TO THE KNOWN ISSUES LIST AND IT'S MANY YEARS OLD BUGS BEFORE ANY MORE CONTENT. YOU SAID YOU WOULD HAVE THE TEAM 'BUGSMASH', KEEP YOUR WORD AND FIX THE BUGS FIRST!


see the other thread where they are asking what bug annoys you the most.

[changelingamuck]

This is exciting as always. I'm only a bit anxious about the Ravenloft setting. I only know it involved UNDEAD and I'm pretty tired of that in many ways. Plus, this makes my Rogue shudder. Heh.

Hopefully we get more than undead in Ravenloft!

Ravenloft does not equal Undead. People on the forums have just beaten that idea into the ground without a sufficient understanding of the setting. The Ravenloft setting is a fantasy horror pastiche setting that draws from a vast, vast array of different horror source material from the Island of Dr. Moreau to a horror twist on Pinocchio to faeries as they were in the original horrific versions of faerie tales.

There are domains ruled by ordinary human manipulator/mastermind-types with no supernatural status whatsoever. There's wererats, Lovecraftian illithids, poisoners, blood/pyre/grave/mist dark elemental variants, uniquely cursed humans, rakshasas, serial killers, evil bloodsucking treants, dread dopplegangers etc. etc. etc. Of course, in horror as a genre, there are plenty of undead to be found, but the setting isn't anywhere near as one-dimensional as people make it sound. It sounds like they're planning on basing some portion of an expansion's content on the original Ravenloft I6 adventure module (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenloft_(module)) that inspired the setting as a whole. That portion of the expansion's content that takes place in Castle Ravenloft itself would need to be moderately-to-highly heavy on undead. For the rest of the content? There's an enormous amount of non-undead source material to draw from. There were dozens of adventure modules/campaign expansions made for the setting that featured fantasy-horror adversaries of all shapes and sizes.

Even the undead themselves in Ravenloft are often novel and interesting and not what we've seen before, like cerebral vampires who subsist on cerebral fluid instead of blood and have unique strengths and weaknesses.

[BoBoDaClown]

~ World Character Transfers: We've heard from many of you that our process to transfer characters from one world to another needs to be more intuitive and take less time. Our new launcher-based system will send a character or characters from one world to another in seconds, and players will be able to pay for their transfers directly with Turbine Points. We think you'll like this transfer system, which is already in place in our sister game Lord of the Rings Online. Expect to see it debut by the end of the year.


Hopefully this is free for awhile to satisfy those of us who want to play with a higher population. For those of us like that, it would accomplish much the same thing as a server merge.

[BoBoDaClown]

If the transfer technology is so streamlined that it only takes seconds... why not implement free temporary transfers?
1) make global LFM panel available from the launcher.
2) allow players to log with a character directly to any server.
3) restrict trading of visiting characters if you're worried about global economy.

NOM NOM


At £20 a Pop even if it's able to be bought with TP it will still be too expensive for many.

And honestly with the amount of alts around I think you'd get a lot more sales out of this by halving the cost or even more.



Free for a while.

[BoBoDaClown]

So we're only getting 1 new quest the rest of the year? That's really disappointing. I was hoping for a big holiday update with some new raids like we got last year. And assuming the two proposed updates hit in october and december, we're probably going to be see the first update in 2017 drop in februrary or march. So we're stuck with only 1 new quest in 6 months? And over an entire year without any new raids? :( I hope there's some content stuff not included in this letter.


Yes. When I read 2 updates, 1 big 1small, I expected quests and raids.

While I agree with you re: racial imbalances, I'd still like to see a new race :)

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Uh....Isn't Mystra dead in the DDO timeline?

Isn't that why Anna is the Thread of the Weave?



/tries to think of something creative to say about worshiping Anna... :cool:

[Tahkhesis]

This all excellent news and I'm very excited about the future of this game. Thanks for all the hard work you guys do.

[nightmaremxt]

Kobold! Please a thousand times Kobold!

[Nonesuch2008]

Two producer's letters in a row containing multiple unexpected items & buzzworthy news as well. And since you've teased Revels twice now, you have to crank it up at least a week or two in advance of Halloween this year.

I think this letter is as ambitious, if not more so, than the last one, but both of them have given us some very far-reaching plans to let us know that DDO will be around for the foreseeable future. Tough job balancing classes/races, bug fixing, adding new content plus streamlining & refining the existing content, and of course, placating a player base that wants it all right now. Mixing in some of the new, some QoL/bug fixes, and the odd surprise that we're not expecting with each update seems like a good recipe.

I'm looking forward to seeing it all & learning what some of these as yet unrevealed surprises are!

[lyrecono]

I hope you've been enjoying Against the Slave Lords, checking out our new Cannith Crafting update, and helping us celebrate a decade of DDO! I'm writing today to talk about our plans for the rest of the year and beyond.

Our goal is to release two updates before the end of the year. One of the updates will be larger, the other smaller, and combined they'll bring several things that players have long asked for to DDO. Since we are currently working on two updates, it isn't clear yet what will be in each update. We'll release things when they are ready, so if something isn't ready in time for next month, we'll see if we can finalize it for the following update in December.

Here's the list of Things We’re Working On:

~ Updated Night Revels event: First up, we’re working on an update to The Night Revels, our Halloween-themed event which debuted last year. We’re planning to add a couple of new quests along with a handful of new items that will focus on cosmetic fun. We’re expecting the updated Night Revels to debut later in October.

~ A new Questing hub: We've long wanted to help people figure out where to go and what to do when they come back to DDO from some time away, and this hub will help both them as well as anyone who'd like to get to quest entrances more quickly. We don't have a name for this new system yet, and we'll be talking a lot more about it in the coming weeks.

~ World Character Transfers: We've heard from many of you that our process to transfer characters from one world to another needs to be more intuitive and take less time. Our new launcher-based system will send a character or characters from one world to another in seconds, and players will be able to pay for their transfers directly with Turbine Points. We think you'll like this transfer system, which is already in place in our sister game Lord of the Rings Online. Expect to see it debut by the end of the year.

~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.

~ A new free dungeon: We’re expecting to release a new free dungeon in December that we think fans of A Study in Sable will enjoy. This quest sends adventurers to a popular type of pen and paper location that hasn’t had much representation in DDO. I’d say more, but I don’t want to spoil it.

~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

~ Monks and Favored Soul updates: Continuing our class work, you can expect an overhaul of handwraps in addition to updated enhancement trees for both classes.

Looking beyond 2016, we know many of you have been hearing the rumors and teases about Ravenloft, so let's talk Strahd. We're 100% interested in bringing Ravenloft to DDO, and are working through the process to make it happen. We don't have an exact time frame in mind, although our current plan has it coming to DDO sometime towards the end of 2017. We can't wait to bring one of the most popular and classic adventures in Dungeons & Dragons history to the game.

We’re also planning for our 11th anniversary in late February! We’re hoping to debut a new playable race for the anniversary along with some new adventuring. We’ve been asking you whether you’d like to play a kobold or dragonborn, and while the final decision hasn’t been made, it looks like many of you would enjoy the dragonborn, so we’ll see what the anniversary brings.

It remains an honor to be your Executive Producer, and I'll be back later this year to look ahead to 2017. Until next time, may the loot gods smile on you.

~ Sev


1, night revels; do we get a spectral dragon this time?

2, returning player quest hub; don't we have guilds, guild ships and mentors for those? not that i would minds but it seems redundant in a age of scarcity.

3, it's one way of offering server merges i guess.

4, Deity feats, why? sure Eberron is atheistic, sure there are plenty of religions but there are no gods that walk the mortal plain.

5, A new free dungeon, that's nice i guess.

6, character bank, are you addressing the tr bank too? i get sick and tired of loosing items during tr.

7, monk& fvs, bit late but appreciated.

8, ravenloft? why? where's khorvaire?

9, Races, why those 2, why not where touched or some other more Eberron savvy related race?

[Qezuzu]

~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.

Hopefully these new deity feats simply expand build options and create new builds, and don't just simply add on to existing power, e.g. "WIS to damage with [weapon classes]" would be good, "+10 melee power" bad (and boring.)


~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

I'll echo what others are saying: the reincarnation cache also needs the same UI. It's baffling that something so clunky, obtuse, and commonly used has existed for so long without any improvements whatsoever.


~ Monks and Favored Soul updates: Continuing our class work, you can expect an overhaul of handwraps in addition to updated enhancement trees for both classes.

Would it be possible to get a road map for the classes after that? Pretty much all the casters besides Warlock need work, as well. A bunch of things in the Season's Herald tree and Druid spellbook don't even function correctly.

[Marc]

Really, really good news! Thanks for staying in touch.

I'd like to ask (and I think my fellows DDO players will agree) two new resources (although I think they should not be very hard to implement):

- A search system for the TR cache. If possible, a sorting system also, the same way it happens with the normal inventory. And a "sort by level" would also be very welcome.

- An "Empty TR Cache" button or a better, faster system to empty TR cache, which actually may take more than half an hour. So hitting that button all the items would go to normal inventory and bank.

PRETTY PLEASE? :)

Cheers!


I hope you've been enjoying Against the Slave Lords, checking out our new Cannith Crafting update, and helping us celebrate a decade of DDO! I'm writing today to talk about our plans for the rest of the year and beyond.

Our goal is to release two updates before the end of the year. One of the updates will be larger, the other smaller, and combined they'll bring several things that players have long asked for to DDO. Since we are currently working on two updates, it isn't clear yet what will be in each update. We'll release things when they are ready, so if something isn't ready in time for next month, we'll see if we can finalize it for the following update in December.

[Sylvado]

~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

~ Sev

If you could provide an hook to the inventory record or a means to export a character inventory and bank contents that would be very nice.

[Cetus]

So there are no new LE raids or quest series on the docket for this year? This is very saddening.

[Jandric]

Yes, very nice, thank you! I love seeing D&D modules coming to life in DDO!

White Plume Mountain would be cool.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-keuIH7BGA7o/Tcn810nvvsI/AAAAAAAADMw/G1tufWtsQgE/s1600/wpm.jpg

This! And Blackrazor would be perfect to coincide with the release of sentient weapons. Just saying :)

[Blastyswa]

~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.


Please make the deities highly unique, and be focused towards particular niches; I know that's not really the focus of the current deity feats, but I'd love for followers of Nerull to have bonuses to necromancy and death and penalties to light and healing that really push them into that focus, as well as that same type of specialization for other deities. I just used Nerull as an example because that was my cleric's deity in my old 2nd Edition campaign, and I very very much hope that I'll finally be able to make a more accurate version of that character in DDO.

Summary: Nerull! Nerull! Nerull!

[EllisDee37]

Oh, character BANK. I was thinking inventory. Meh, I don't much care about the character bank interface. I mean, I do manually organize my character banks, but my organization usually ends up feeling less than ideal, so whatever. TR cache could use some love, for sure.

For world transfers, to be honest I've never really understood the thinking behind the service. Who in their right mind would transfer one character?! I could see maybe 2000 TP to transfer your entire account, but just one character? Makes zero sense to me. (And to clarify: Only having one character also makes zero sense to me.)

[solstinox]

I think that a kobold shaman iconic race/class would make a lot of sense.

[Kaylenn]

These quotes echo my main thoughts upon reading this letter. I like most of the new stuff, but the bank part makes me nervous. Please hear these considerations before eliminating the well used Kundarak tab system. You can NOT just copy/paste the shared bank system as it is now. If you do anything, you MUST make it more functional first.

(On a side note: Eww dragonborn. Yay Kobold!!!)


While it would be nice to have more character bank storage, I'd rather keep what we have than have it replaced with the current shared bank interface. I use the tabs to sort my stuff. Yes, I can search for items in the shared bank interface, but I can only search by name. That doesn't help me when I pull things out of my TR cache and store them in my character bank by ML so that they're easier to find when I level up. It also doesn't help if I'm working through a few epic past lives and store my level 26 gear set in one tab so that it's really easy to swap gear when I hit level 26. It also doesn't allow me to put certain "important" items in the first tab so that I always see them when I open the bank. It also doesn't allow me to put items that I'll no longer use this life on a separate tab so that I don't have to bother looking through them when I'm searching for something.

Of course, the best option would be if you improve the shared storage interface before changing the personal bank storage to use it. Here are a few things that could be improved with the shared bank interface:

- There's no easy way to move items around in the list.

- Paging through the shared crafting storage can be slow and painful. I have about 30 pages, and I sometimes use it to move items among toons. The last items added go at the end of the list, and it isn't always easy to search for them.

- Adding new sorting methods (ML, item type, reverse time order, etc.) would make it easier to use.

- Adding new search methods (ML, item type, item attributes, etc.) would make it easier to use.

- Having subdirectories in the storage that we can rename would really help with keeping things sorted and easy to find.


I hate that you are taking the interface I like (character bank) and changing it to the one I hate (shared bank).

My character bank has all the tabs nicely organized so I can quickly find the items I'm looking for. Most of the time I'm looking for all the items of a certain ML range so searching in the shared bank is nowhere near as useful as being able to pick the order things are in. Meanwhile I will have put all items of the same ML on the same tab in my character bank making it easy to find what I'm looking for.

That said the shared bank interface would be somewhat more useful if it listed the most recent items first instead of the oldest, and if I didn't have to scroll AND go to other pages. (It should be one or the other not both).


This is also my concern about such a UI change.


For the bank change, I'd echo others' concerns. I'd guess a fair number of players are a little OCD in terms of how they keep their items organized. As it stands, the shared bank doesn't allow any organization to it, short of manually pulling out and putting back in a particular order which is tedious at best. Even if you could add up/down arrows like are in the quivers, it would still be annoying to get things where you want them. Hopefully you have some new organizational scheme in mind or there could be many aggravated players...


While I liked the Tabbed interface of the Kundarak Bank I also feel that a few enhancements to the interface (which will work for all tabs) would help make sorting/finding easier

1. Sort, By Name or By Minimum Level
Sorting by name should use Minimum Level as its secondary sort and sorting by Minimum Level should use the Name as a secondary sort

2. Add a way to jump to a page. Sometimes you just want to jump to page 9 of 22 (Could see this as a number entry box). Or if anything provide a Jump to First and Last Page and a 5 page Jump in either direction.


But there is one thing I'm skeptical about:

Improved look? I guess, maybe. Improved functionality? I think you and I have different definitions of functionality. I agree with those above who prefer using the current character bank tabs to the shared bank. It's a pain to find things in the shared bank. I only have 60 slots in my shared bank because if I bought more it would just mean having to tab and scroll more and a harder time to find what I'm looking for. I'm always short on storage it seems, but I dislike the shared bank UI enough that I don't consider buying more an option. If there aren't improved organization/sorting/searching methods included in this change, please reconsider. Hopefully, you just didn't mention the shared bank UI improvements you plan in this brief summary.

[Marupal]

<list of amazing stuff>

~ Sev

Booyah! :)

[Devidar]

I've wanted to play a Kobold sooo bad ever since I found Deekin! They're so cool!

[koluka]

Wow that's a lot!!!

Most sounds really great. Keen to see monk changes go in. Someone I know is eagerly waiting... anticipating...

Echoing others re bank changes... not so keen to seen character bank changes. I like having a bank I can sort as I wish.

[Micki]

My understanding is the transfer system itself doesn't have a check on it, but you could log into the world and attempt to create a character with the name if it's a concern. Of course you'll then want to delete the character prior to transferring.

Yet easier and faster would be to enter the world and attempt to add that name to your friends list? If the character doesn't exist, the game will tell you the character can't be added?

Your suggestion is of course more sure, but takes more time.

[LrdSlvrhnd]

~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

I was doing a lot of YAYing reading this letter. But this really had me jumping for joy. And then I thought about it, and thought about it some more, and now I'm of two minds.

I like being able to arrange things by tab (makes it easier to see what I've grabbed for, say, weapons when I level up)... but being able to search and eventually get MOAR BANK will be awesome. And I hate the pagination of the shared bank (and *really* hate it in the crafting bank)... and there's nothing to offset that.

What I'd *really* love is to have it more like the Inventory, with tabs for different types of items and sorting. Can we have it more like that, please? I don't even mind losing the "paper doll" page with all the different inventory tabs, I'd be extremely happy with the "scroll" page where you can search and sort and just look for weapons or clothing or whatnot. (And speaking of sorting, Sort by ML would be a nice option...)

For the crafting storage, I'd love tabs down the side - Augments, Collectibles Used in Cannith Crafting, Crystal Cove (or just Festivals in general), Cannith Challenges, Eveningstar Challenges (or maybe just Challenges), etc. So when I'm looking for, say, ToD boot ings and I'm totally blanking on the fourth one, I can narrow it down a bit. (Actually, it'd be good just to have it be more like how the Collectibles bags do it, I'd be very happy with that...)

The other thing I'd really, really, really, REALLY like is to have the TR cache "divorced" from the bank. Now, I'm not asking you to actually make any changes (although lots of changes there would be really nice), just... not have it auto-open every time you open the bank. I lock up for several seconds every time I do that. And then I realized I forgot to put something in the shared bank and have to do it again. And then I remember the Item of Awesomeness that I'd looted on another character for this one and have to open it up *again* to take it out. I don't need to check out the cache EVERY time I open the bank. I would just like the banker to have three options. Open the bank, open then TR cache, and close window.

[JeisonBlade]

looking forward to a nice clean banking system, been wanting that a looonnggg time, my OCD hates three different style inventory panels lol. having access to sorting funtions will make my life easier

[LrdSlvrhnd]

For world transfers, to be honest I've never really understood the thinking behind the service. Who in their right mind would transfer one character?! I could see maybe 2000 TP to transfer your entire account, but just one character? Makes zero sense to me. (And to clarify: Only having one character also makes zero sense to me.)

Oh, I dunno about this. I have one character on a server I no longer play on, who I'd cheerfully transfer to my main server... but I don't really have anybody else on that server I care enough about to bother. I just played in a static group over there for a while, one night a week, so I really only had the one character. I really liked this one character (who had some randgen loot with affixes that no longer drop... although it's mainly his weapon of pure awesomeness which... would likely be woefully obsolete now...) and would love to play him again, and if this was a reasonable price I'd totally transfer just him and nobody else.

[Gremmlynn]

Uh....Isn't Mystra dead in the DDO timeline?

Isn't that why Anna is the Thread of the Weave?I got the impression that Anna is Mystra reborn.

[EllisDee37]

Oh, I dunno about this. I have one character on a server I no longer play on, who I'd cheerfully transfer to my main server... but I don't really have anybody else on that server I care enough about to bother. I just played in a static group over there for a while, one night a week, so I really only had the one character. I really liked this one character (who had some randgen loot with affixes that no longer drop... although it's mainly his weapon of pure awesomeness which... would likely be woefully obsolete now...) and would love to play him again, and if this was a reasonable price I'd totally transfer just him and nobody else.Oh I totally get that; I have lots of disposable characters littering every server.

I was envisioning something like: For 2000 TP, you can freely transfer whatever characters you choose to any other server for the next [period of time]. An hour? A day? Whatever; some reasonable amount of time that would ensure you could make all the transfers you wanted.

As an example, let's say I log on to Argo (my home server), then buy a server transfer in the store. Now I decide to send all my main alts to Sarlona, and my challenge farmers to Thelanis. Done and done. (Not that I would actually ever do this; I'd send everyone to the same server. Just an illustration.)

[databass]

Tabs in character bank nameable for better organization.
Increase (double) maximum amount of character bank space (TP purchasable is fine).
Ability to move items around within the TR cache itself, to allow for organization by item type, min. level, etc. and/or a search field by item type, level, etc. for TR cache.
Have items return to their original spot in inventory when used (a position lock down feature).

[Jelstorkan]

~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

I would rather see character storage reduced and Shared bank space increased and all characters being able to access it wherever, also categorisation to be able to list types of weapons, gear or level etc. The current system is a nightmare, I seem to spend lots of time searching for gear. with 25 toons not surprising :) but revamp long overdue.

[Gralhota]

Another useless year for Wizards, maybe in 2018.

Going to three years of waiting.

[SpritesDaddyo]

+1 on the Questing Hub feature...this speaks directly to me as I leave the game for a year or two then come back to (what appears to me) major changes...and all I wanna do is find the new dungeons!

Funny...way back then, when we only had a handful of slots in our Inv I couldn't wait for more space....now I see a dozen tabs with tons of 'stuff'!:
--As earlier posts noted: more space WITH a solid way to manage/sort/search your slots will be key.

...DDO has been around for over 10 years (??!!).

[Sam-u-r-eye]

So there are no new LE raids or quest series on the docket for this year? This is very saddening.

ya apparently they want a subsection of the population to take a break or find another game?
not even a mention? Sev you there mate?

[Redgob]

While it would be nice to have more character bank storage, I'd rather keep what we have than have it replaced with the current shared bank interface. I use the tabs to sort my stuff. Yes, I can search for items in the shared bank interface, but I can only search by name. That doesn't help me when I pull things out of my TR cache and store them in my character bank by ML so that they're easier to find when I level up. It also doesn't help if I'm working through a few epic past lives and store my level 26 gear set in one tab so that it's really easy to swap gear when I hit level 26. It also doesn't allow me to put certain "important" items in the first tab so that I always see them when I open the bank. It also doesn't allow me to put items that I'll no longer use this life on a separate tab so that I don't have to bother looking through them when I'm searching for something.

+1000

This is not going to end well if you remove the only way of sorting the items except main inventory (manually, by level etc.). Personally I have only about 60 free slots in my shared bank and not planning to ever get more because the interface is painfully slow (next page... sleep... next page... sleep...) and useless (no way to change order in any sane way).

[Sam-u-r-eye]

Since this procedure won't involve a human resource anymore - will it be cheaper ? :)

If they made it free, it would solve server population issues. People could just organize on server by level. 1-9 Cannith. 10-14 Khyber. 15-19 Thelanis. 20-27 Ghallanda. 28-30 Sarlona. Lvl30 farming server Wayfinder.

As someone else mentioned the only issues are with Guild, Store, and Ships; however, if you transfer around for a TR and then transfer back when you're done it wouldn't be a big deal. As long as they keep the price down I will probably do this just to check out the other servers.

$25 is too much, and the way in which it occurs is often a burden.

[thanytos]

[QUOTE=Severlin;5874491]I hope you've been enjoying Against the Slave Lords, checking out our new Cannith Crafting update, and helping us celebrate a decade of DDO! I'm writing today to talk about our plans for the rest of the year and beyond.


~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.

~ I think someone is secretly listening or grouping with players...I swear I was just talking about this last week with someone

[Rys]

If they made it free, it would solve server population issues. People could just organize on server by level. 1-9 Cannith. 10-14 Khyber. 15-19 Thelanis. 20-27 Ghallanda. 28-30 Sarlona. Lvl30 farming server Wayfinder.
And the rebels will stay on Argo and Orien...

[Sam-u-r-eye]

And the rebels will stay on Argo and Orien...

lol

[maddong]

So excluding special event restrings that in my mind don't count as quests we will have only had 7 quests this year in all updates? We used to get 7 quests in a single update....

I think you need to focus more on giving us something to do....

More quests, all level 32+.

Change all raids to level 31-34 with legendary versions of the eq.

Dragonborn doesn't excite me when we have human/PDK (extra feat and damage boost), elf (arcane archer), and bladeforged (reconstruct).

[Hafeal]

http://lostangelesblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Not_sure_what_to_say.gif

[Steve_Howe]

I got the impression that Anna is Mystra reborn.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/478970-DDO-Producer-s-Letter-September-2016?p=5874634&viewfull=1#post5874634

[Casareena]

I know you are probably working on them anyway but...can you keep looking at bug fixes too please? I love playing DDO, the whole game is fantastic it can be a bit frustrating and saddening when lag hits majorly either in or out of quest though.

I love what is included in your letter and looking forward to it all thank you.

[changelingamuck]

I know you are probably working on them anyway but...can you keep looking at bug fixes too please?

The One Thing Thread (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/478966-The-One-Thing-Thread)

[Silverleafeon]

~ Updated Night Revels event: Fawn and I loved last years event, good to see it expanded.


~ A new Questing hub: Now this sounds very promising. I was just thinking the other day, that to play this game you really have to have a good knowledge of how to find the quests. This could be a huge change, just ponder how many more CitW would be run (at least on Khyber where we do things right) if one could just teleport directly into the 1st thru 3rd chain dungeons, making flagging more knowing the dungeons, rather than wandering the wilderness?


~ World Character Transfers: Well, Fawn likes Khyber, but I gotta say the customer service for undelete has been really good, so this upgrade has interest, especially if one can return to a world after leaving it?


~ Deity feats: New Deities and new deity options, this sounds sweet. This could be a really big thing.


~ A new free dungeon: Study in Sable was a good dungeon to add, rounding out the flavor of DDO, and we do need to keep the F2P base alive and well.


~Character Bank Storage: Well, anything bank/storage will be nice. Nuff said there.


~ Monks and Favored Soul updates: Thanks, they both need help.


Ravenloft would make a great addition to the Hall of Heroes along with ToEE & Against the Slave Lords, both of which I enjoy very much. If Ravenloft needs to be split into pieces, do so.


Dragonborn won my heart, because I think Kobolds should be a challenge race, and challenge classes should come first and would be so much easier to implement as soon as we get a 2nd independent enhancement tree (of which we should eventually have 3+

[AAH]

How about fix the entire interface.

It's like driving an old car that tries to keep up.

Or perhaps you could let someone in the business who actually is interested in the user experience have some say.

Call yourself a producer ... call me a skeptic.

[junior_w]

It sounds good.

[sargon007]

[QUOTE=Severlin;5874491]I hope you've been enjoying Against the Slave Lords, checking out our new Cannith Crafting update, and helping us celebrate a decade of DDO! I'm writing today to talk about our plans for the rest of the year and beyond.


~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.

~ I think someone is secretly listening or grouping with players...I swear I was just talking about this last week with someone

Let use the 1980 printing of Deities and Demigods. Special Cleric power /say Hastur Hastur Has..... and the summoning might not work as you hoped. Do Not Call Up That Which You Cannot Put Down!!!

[diasho2]

I got the impression that Anna is Mystra reborn.

there was a series written in the late 1980s the avatar series where mystra was killed by Torm under instruction from Ao. Before being killed she made a girl named midnight a portion of her power, the ability to directly access the weave. This girl eventually took the place of mystra and chose to change her name from midnight to mystra. There were a couple of other dieties that got replaced in that series as well. If you read this series it would be easy mix this death up with anna and the thread of the weave.
The avatar series also gives a good description of the time of troubles, what happened shortly before, during, and after. I'm not sure where the ddo timeline falls I do know it is post time of troubles though.

[FranOhmsford]

The avatar series also gives a good description of the time of troubles, what happened shortly before, during, and after. I'm not sure where the ddo timeline falls I do know it is post time of troubles though.

We're 100 years post the time of troubles!

And we've had the Spellplague too - Oh I wish DDO could retcon that out of existence so we could actually have Halruaa introduced!

[Baal222]

I know I keep requesting this, but I feel strongly about it, and I'm not the only one. Overall, I like all the updates DDO has had over the years, but hirelings still need a rework VERY badly. Seriously, I love this game, but it's agonizing to have a cleric stand there and watch you die. Over and over again until they dont have spell points for rezzes anymore. I realize you guys want to push social game play, but a hireling rework can do that too. Considering hirelings are an important feature in DDO, they need to have AI and pathing that works FOR players instead of against them.

[Free2Pay]

~ A new Questing hub: We've long wanted to help people figure out where to go and what to do when they come back to DDO from some time away, and this hub will help both them as well as anyone who'd like to get to quest entrances more quickly. We don't have a name for this new system yet, and we'll be talking a lot more about it in the coming weeks.


THIS. I was about to make a post suggesting some sort of queue system where party are automatically grouped up and teleported into dungeons and I saw this. This will definitely improves game play experience for both new and older players. I have most content packs (except 2) but I don't get to play them often enough because I don't even know which NPC I should be talking to or where they are located. And I shouldn't be looking up wiki to find them either.



~ World Character Transfers: We've heard from many of you that our process to transfer characters from one world to another needs to be more intuitive and take less time. Our new launcher-based system will send a character or characters from one world to another in seconds, and players will be able to pay for their transfers directly with Turbine Points. We think you'll like this transfer system, which is already in place in our sister game Lord of the Rings Online. Expect to see it debut by the end of the year.

May I suggest that on top of this, allow a one free character transfer (per server) for each account, into Wayfinder only? This will free up character(s) which players are unwilling to delete and also allow players a chance to try out Wayfinder without having to grind their raid gears all over again. Essentially killing 2 birds with one stone.



~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.

Domains?




~ Monks and Favored Soul updates: Continuing our class work, you can expect an overhaul of handwraps in addition to updated enhancement trees for both classes.

The only 2 classes I have ever bought. The only 2 classes I've never played (to high levels). And I've stopped buying classes ever since. Let's see how this one goes.

[FranOhmsford]

May I suggest that on top of this, allow a one free character transfer (per server) for each account, into Wayfinder only? This will free up character(s) which players are unwilling to delete and also allow players a chance to try out Wayfinder without having to grind their raid gears all over again. Essentially killing 2 birds with one stone.

I just logged on to Wayfinder and checked the Who List - 21 {TWENTY ONE} Players Online!

I'd suggest giving out Free Transfers OFF Wayfinder NOT on to it!

[die]

I hope you've been enjoying Against the Slave Lords, checking out our new Cannith Crafting update, and helping us celebrate a decade of DDO! I'm writing today to talk about our plans for the rest of the year and beyond.

Our goal is to release two updates before the end of the year. One of the updates will be larger, the other smaller, and combined they'll bring several things that players have long asked for to DDO. Since we are currently working on two updates, it isn't clear yet what will be in each update. We'll release things when they are ready, so if something isn't ready in time for next month, we'll see if we can finalize it for the following update in December.

Here's the list of Things We’re Working On:

~ Updated Night Revels event: First up, we’re working on an update to The Night Revels, our Halloween-themed event which debuted last year. We’re planning to add a couple of new quests along with a handful of new items that will focus on cosmetic fun. We’re expecting the updated Night Revels to debut later in October.

~ A new Questing hub: We've long wanted to help people figure out where to go and what to do when they come back to DDO from some time away, and this hub will help both them as well as anyone who'd like to get to quest entrances more quickly. We don't have a name for this new system yet, and we'll be talking a lot more about it in the coming weeks.

~ World Character Transfers: We've heard from many of you that our process to transfer characters from one world to another needs to be more intuitive and take less time. Our new launcher-based system will send a character or characters from one world to another in seconds, and players will be able to pay for their transfers directly with Turbine Points. We think you'll like this transfer system, which is already in place in our sister game Lord of the Rings Online. Expect to see it debut by the end of the year.

~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.

~ A new free dungeon: We’re expecting to release a new free dungeon in December that we think fans of A Study in Sable will enjoy. This quest sends adventurers to a popular type of pen and paper location that hasn’t had much representation in DDO. I’d say more, but I don’t want to spoil it.

~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

~ Monks and Favored Soul updates: Continuing our class work, you can expect an overhaul of handwraps in addition to updated enhancement trees for both classes.

Looking beyond 2016, we know many of you have been hearing the rumors and teases about Ravenloft, so let's talk Strahd. We're 100% interested in bringing Ravenloft to DDO, and are working through the process to make it happen. We don't have an exact time frame in mind, although our current plan has it coming to DDO sometime towards the end of 2017. We can't wait to bring one of the most popular and classic adventures in Dungeons & Dragons history to the game.

We’re also planning for our 11th anniversary in late February! We’re hoping to debut a new playable race for the anniversary along with some new adventuring. We’ve been asking you whether you’d like to play a kobold or dragonborn, and while the final decision hasn’t been made, it looks like many of you would enjoy the dragonborn, so we’ll see what the anniversary brings.

It remains an honor to be your Executive Producer, and I'll be back later this year to look ahead to 2017. Until next time, may the loot gods smile on you.

~ Sev

What I'm reading here is between now and the end of 2017 there will be one quest released. - Doom

[SuperNiCd]

Very cool. Without forfeiting my right to whine and moan about specific things in the future ;) I think that that whole team - the producer, community manager, developers, artists, story writers, GMs, and whatever other roles I've forgotten - are all doing a great job. It's a fine game, lots of fun. Thanks for all you do and are planning to do.

[kenawyn]

I hope you've been enjoying Against the Slave Lords, checking out our new Cannith Crafting update, and helping us celebrate a decade of DDO! I'm writing today to talk about our plans for the rest of the year and beyond.

The Against the Slave Lords quest line was very well received in our guild.

I only had one problem with it - the bee part was infuriating, because i had to spend 10 minutes waiting for the honey effect to expire, after i limped back into the chasm to try and wash off the honey with the water there only to realize that it's not possible to do so and with the effect on me i was unable to make the jump to get back up.
Please consider offering some alternative solutions in the future, because this kind of railroading is bad!

Talking about multiple options - most situations should be solvable in multiple ways - combat (the current approach), magic (using specific spells), sneaking around avoiding danger, using skills (diplomacy and bluff)... etc. When facing a challenge like the honey effect, it was a reasonable assumption to use water to remove the honey. I also tried to remove my armor to see if it made any difference... but the game only offers one solution - which is bad design. Having quests that only support one solution is one of the reasons people are only investing in damage and combat survival.

By the way we ran the quests on Heroic Elite with a short-man party using weak builds at level 10 and managed to get wiped out at the end fight - not realizing the nature of the encounter (the 80% defense spell the boss was casting). It was amazing! :)
It's been a long time since we had to restart a quest because of a party wipe. It was refreshing.

Unfortunately using top tier characters the content was not that challenging... :(


Our goal is to release two updates before the end of the year. One of the updates will be larger, the other smaller, and combined they'll bring several things that players have long asked for to DDO. Since we are currently working on two updates, it isn't clear yet what will be in each update. We'll release things when they are ready, so if something isn't ready in time for next month, we'll see if we can finalize it for the following update in December.

Sounds great!


Here's the list of Things We’re Working On:

~ Updated Night Revels event: First up, we’re working on an update to The Night Revels, our Halloween-themed event which debuted last year. We’re planning to add a couple of new quests along with a handful of new items that will focus on cosmetic fun. We’re expecting the updated Night Revels to debut later in October.

Our guild was rarely involved in these kinds of events, but i am sure many people will find this very useful.

About the cosmetics - its not related to the event, but is it possible to get some new cosmetic armor that is based on actual medieval armor (maybe some 15th century Gothic full plate armor)?
No offense, but your in game fantasy armors look pretty terrible and i would pay good money to have some equipment that makes sense and looks authentic.


~ A new Questing hub: We've long wanted to help people figure out where to go and what to do when they come back to DDO from some time away, and this hub will help both them as well as anyone who'd like to get to quest entrances more quickly. We don't have a name for this new system yet, and we'll be talking a lot more about it in the coming weeks.

As long as this questing hub is not being forced on us, its fine.
I just hope this doesn't mean the end of outland areas and quest locations being accessible only from the questing hub...


~ World Character Transfers: We've heard from many of you that our process to transfer characters from one world to another needs to be more intuitive and take less time. Our new launcher-based system will send a character or characters from one world to another in seconds, and players will be able to pay for their transfers directly with Turbine Points. We think you'll like this transfer system, which is already in place in our sister game Lord of the Rings Online. Expect to see it debut by the end of the year.

Very nice.


~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.

Well i am not sure if i like this idea.
In the past when you introduced new feats it lead to unnecessary power creep...
There are a lot of feats that are never used... and if these feats will be so much better then the existing stuff - those underused feats will be even less relevant...

Also will this have any effect on the quests or the gameworld?
Will there be any instances where you get different dialogue options, or even change quest goals based on your religion?
Because if not, than these feats are just a waste of time.

Religion is very important to a believer (i am not one, but i have some friends who are...), even more so in D&D where gods and devils are real.
For immersions sake - based on the situation these feats should give you advantages or disadvantages.
Also most gods have rules - what a follower can do and cannot do - will there be a system to track the sins and virtues of the players?
If so how will this be handled mechanically?


~ A new free dungeon: We’re expecting to release a new free dungeon in December that we think fans of A Study in Sable will enjoy. This quest sends adventurers to a popular type of pen and paper location that hasn’t had much representation in DDO. I’d say more, but I don’t want to spoil it.

Amazing!


~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

Please keep the tabs!
While i appreciate the extra space - it's much easier to navigate the existing personal bank interface.
I would rather see an option to only open the shared bank account/crafting storage and reincarnation storage on demand to speed up the opening of the forms.


~ Monks and Favored Soul updates: Continuing our class work, you can expect an overhaul of handwraps in addition to updated enhancement trees for both classes.

Well, it looks like two more classes i will have to skip in the future.
The ongoing overhauls introduced a lot of power creep into the game, that made everything easy mode and destroyed the need for cooperation and partying.
So as opposed to the majority of players, this is something i am not looking forward to.

I believe this game needs a massive redesign - similar to what World of Warcraft did when Warlords came out.
Our stats and almost all of our numeric values are too high! It's impossible to balance the current game around a d20 roll.


Looking beyond 2016, we know many of you have been hearing the rumors and teases about Ravenloft, so let's talk Strahd. We're 100% interested in bringing Ravenloft to DDO, and are working through the process to make it happen. We don't have an exact time frame in mind, although our current plan has it coming to DDO sometime towards the end of 2017. We can't wait to bring one of the most popular and classic adventures in Dungeons & Dragons history to the game.

Ravenloft - Personally, i am not that interested in that setting, but i am sure a lot of people will enjoy it's inclusion to the game. It could be worse.


We’re also planning for our 11th anniversary in late February! We’re hoping to debut a new playable race for the anniversary along with some new adventuring. We’ve been asking you whether you’d like to play a kobold or dragonborn, and while the final decision hasn’t been made, it looks like many of you would enjoy the dragonborn, so we’ll see what the anniversary brings.

Meh.
I can't say that i am looking forward to this new race :(

The kobold i can somewhat understand, because of the history of the game... but I still think there are better things to spend development time and resources.

About the dragonborn i can only say this:
Last year when you added the Warlock class at first we were really hyped... but then we realized that you are not going to use the D&D 3.5 implementation of the class.
After 2 months of the Warlocks release several of my friends quit the game for good. They have yet to return. Their guild is now abandoned...
Now you are planning to add an other abomination - which might damage the population of our guild.

We do not have a large guild, so if it comes to that - loosing us will not impact the game that much.
I just thought i point out that there are some people - probably a minority - that dislike the current trend of moving away from the 3rd edition of D&D.


It remains an honor to be your Executive Producer, and I'll be back later this year to look ahead to 2017. Until next time, may the loot gods smile on you.

~ Sev

Thanks!

[jampat696]

Just wondering if there would be room for a playable Planetouched or Tiefling races? I would expect them to be much like drow creation as far as stat points go.

[Arlathen]

~ Monks and Favored Soul updates: Continuing our class work, you can expect an overhaul of handwraps in addition to updated enhancement trees for both classes.


Is the 3rd FvS class tree pretty much set in stone already, or is there still time to contribute ideas & suggestions?

[moo_cow]

ya apparently they want a subsection of the population to take a break or find another game?
not even a mention? Sev you there mate?

I just got back from a year and a half break because there was nothing new and interesting going on. I guess I'll come back in another year to see if anything is actually happening. I might have to break down and finally go and play ESO or something.

[Vish]

On producers letter sept 2016

Deity feats
General, going to be offered to everyone?
Where is the divine love??

How will you track favor to unlock??*
More system?

And fav soul monk pass
Defiantly long awaited
Omg please screw up warpriest
Wisdom conversion anyone?

Please op monks.
That is my end char class.
And add to favored soul
I suggested the charity model

But no divine domains?
Again please beat the red headed step child

Or is this coming with Strahd?
A complete turn undead revamp...?

Oh well I play a warlock anyways so who gaf?

Don't care much about the rest...

Dragonborn over kobold

Transfers and hub whatever...

Where are the content? Haz missing?
I only been playing last year,
Didn't realize we were in a drought
Because need moar quests for legendary

Otherwise good sailing
I'm ok with cannith, need lvl 20 stuffs
Went from 0 to 218 fast tracking. That was sweet.

And slavers, well I'm rolling lock so haha complainers

But does seem the creep isn't needed for the completion
Won't know what to do with my opness.
Will probably grind it, since I hate portals

Need raids
Need raids?*
Need raids

Nuff said...

[changelingamuck]

Deity feats
General, going to be offered to everyone?
Where is the divine love??

I was also confused about this. But they're specific to divine classes. See "Deity Based Feats" on these pages: Cleric (http://ddowiki.com/page/Cleric), Favored Soul (http://ddowiki.com/page/Favored_Soul), Paladin (http://ddowiki.com/page/Paladin).

Maybe druids will get them added in on top of the other classes, but I kind of doubt it.

As for more divine love, favored souls are getting their enhancement revamp after monks along with a third enhancement tree. So, I think that also counts. And druids are still getting a revamp also.

[FoliumSakura]

I personally hate the very idea of Dragonborn.

And I find the Bait and Switch with teasing us about FINALLY getting Kobolds only to take them away like this to be repugnant!

I also would love to have Kobolds, I got really excited when I heard of the chance of them being added to the game.

[japheth-0401]

My understanding is the transfer system itself doesn't have a check on it, but you could log into the world and attempt to create a character with the name if it's a concern. Of course you'll then want to delete the character prior to transferring.

If they are going to use the same character transfer system that currently exists in LOTRO, as they say. Then how transfering a character from one server to another with the same name works, is at the end of your characters name you will have a two letter server abbreviation suffix attached to the toons name signifying the characters original server. You can either leave it this way or wait until such time that you can afford a character name change, or change it in TR. Again that is if the character world transfer system is exactly the same as LOTROs (of course in LOTRO they don't have TR, I was just listing all the ways I could think of a characters named could be changed in DDO).

[japheth-0401]

I think it's really cool that DDO will be utilizing the same system for character transfer that LOTRO utilizes. However what I think would be even better for those of us that play both DDO and LOTRO, is if they would come up with a way that we could link our account to both games allowing us to share TP between the two games. As a player of Turbine MMOs for 16 yrs, I can say without a doubt Turbine is my favorite company to game with hands down. However companys such as Daybreak Games and Perfect World Entertainment can seem to share their cash shop currency between their games, I really don't understand why DDO and LOTRO can not. I suppose it is not a matter of can not so much as will not, since there are LOTRO players who have grandfathered lifetime accounts earning them 500 TP every month without paying sub fee. However the number of lifers that still play LOTRO and that also play DDO are minimal so from a cost standpoint the "loss" would be negligible IMO (for all that's worth). It would be great if Turbine would at least consider this however.

[AbyssalMage]

Looking beyond 2016, we know many of you have been hearing the rumors and teases about Ravenloft, so let's talk Strahd. We're 100% interested in bringing Ravenloft to DDO, and are working through the process to make it happen. We don't have an exact time frame in mind, although our current plan has it coming to DDO sometime towards the end of 2017. We can't wait to bring one of the most popular and classic adventures in Dungeons & Dragons history to the game.
~ Sev
I know Lama-land is a preview server (/puke) so for the love of all that is Eberron, please make it a test server just this one time.


Maybe the first go around in December is just showing players Skins(i.e. map, textures, lighting) and breakables/collectables.
The following one (February?) NPC's AND with updates to the December 2016 preview.
Then the next one (June?) the first "trial runs" so you can test out different mechanics(scripts) you may want to try AND updates to the previous preview (December 2016 and Febrauary 2017)
This is your August release (maybe the individual adventure you hinted at? Could tie into Ravenloft. How cool would that be?), I would like to continue the first three steps. Continue experimenting. It is important that this preview misleads players. This is Ravenloft after all, players shouldn't be sure of anything.
October 31st release (or the week/end of October 31st) should be the celebration of Ravenloft. You have had multiple cycles to hype, mislead, and scare the player base. Now is the time to release your finished product. Players should be able to recognize certain mechanics, shocked that certain mechanics were not included, and generally "knocked off balance" from what was included. A "twist" at the end, never previewed/tested should culminate the release.


Please, this is all possible in the time allotted. Nothing requires extra work as I am sure your internal schedule is ahead of this.

[LucidLTS]

Many interesting things here, and I'm cautiously optimistic. I do have a few things that I worry might not work out so well.

One is bug fixes, I can't really get too excited to anything you add if you add it to a buggy base. I'm currently keeping a toe in the game hoping for better times, but I'm still not seeing Lam used to it's full potential to work out bugs before going live.

Other concerns are related to things you mention

I hope you've been enjoying Against the Slave Lords, checking out our new Cannith Crafting update, and helping us celebrate a decade of DDO! I'm writing today to talk about our plans for the rest of the year and beyond.

I haven't tried Slave Lords yet, but crafting was less of an improvement than I'd hoped. We already had enough collectables in game, and the loss of some staple low level recipes was a big disappointment. BTA was nice though, and not having it 2/3 the power of RGL was absolutely required, so overall it was an improvement.



~ A new Questing hub: We've long wanted to help people figure out where to go and what to do when they come back to DDO from some time away, and this hub will help both them as well as anyone who'd like to get to quest entrances more quickly. We don't have a name for this new system yet, and we'll be talking a lot more about it in the coming weeks.
This could be a big improvement, tedious runs to the entrance are a black mark on some otherwise fun quests. Don't try to make it a paid function, much in the game already feels like you're charging us to alleviate a problem you caused to begin with (not you personally, of course, you as a representative of Turbine, many were before your time). Gianthold does it pretty well (other than the long running bug of frequently not registering if you are in a party when you find the waypoint, but I already mentioned bugs), getting to each point yourself the first time unlocks it for the farshifter. Tangleroot, too.



~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

Please make sure it is filterable and searchable on a variety of criteria, and characters can easily set the order of things in it. Also make sure it's fast to get between pages, and that tooltips and comparison to equipped items of the same type works. Comparison of stats affected would be a great feature to add to this, too - if I mouse over a belt of +Con and +Strength, compare it to my current belt and also mention how much it would change my Con and Str even if current sources were on gloves or rings or whatever. It would also be great if you could build in the hooks for a future web interface that let us look at our gear when we are logged into the forum. It would encourage forum participation, and keep us focused on the game even when we can't play. Check out Path of Exile or Neverwinter Online for some great examples of a web tool that keeps players engaged.



We’re also planning for our 11th anniversary in late February! We’re hoping to debut a new playable race for the anniversary along with some new adventuring. We’ve been asking you whether you’d like to play a kobold or dragonborn, and while the final decision hasn’t been made, it looks like many of you would enjoy the dragonborn, so we’ll see what the anniversary brings.

Is this going to be an anniversary present we have to pay for ourselves? It sounds rather ambitious a present to be free, but tacky to charge for a present, how will you position this?



It remains an honor to be your Executive Producer, and I'll be back later this year to look ahead to 2017. Until next time, may the loot gods smile on you.

~ Sev
Thanks for taking the time to share your plans, I hope they all come to pass in a manner that improves the game!

[ChiliBean]

How about DX12 on the anniversary. That would be a pleasant surprise.

[HAL]

Great letter - everything sounds great. Thank you for the good news.

[Zistra]

Tabs in character bank nameable for better organization.
[...]
Have items return to their original spot in inventory when used (a position lock down feature).

^^ This. I keep specific things on specific tabs in my inventory. Weapons, for example, tab 3. I hate having to drag them back there after every time I've switched weapons. Interestingly, if I switch gear (helmets, for example), the one I take off goes into the spot the one I put on came from. Whereas every time I use a scroll from a stack, the stack moves to tab 1 (or the first available slot). It's far from game-breaking but it is annoying.

[Zistra]

If they made it free, it would solve server population issues. People could just organize on server by level. 1-9 Cannith. 10-14 Khyber. 15-19 Thelanis. 20-27 Ghallanda. 28-30 Sarlona. Lvl30 farming server Wayfinder.


That would make BB (or streak, if you prefer) runs a pain at certain levels. Seems to me it would make more sense to migrate the people who live in closed groups to their own servers and have the other servers for PUGs, with maybe a split for Heroic servers and Epic servers, since they mostly can't group in the same quests anyway. With free moves, if your static group broke up, you could/would then just move to a PUG server. On the static group servers, LFMs would only be for convenience in getting the group together, and on the PUG servers, there ought to be considerably more LFMs from which to choose than there are now.

[Annex]

If they are going to use the same character transfer system that currently exists in LOTRO, as they say. Then how transfering a character from one server to another with the same name works, is at the end of your characters name you will have a two letter server abbreviation suffix attached to the toons name signifying the characters original server. You can either leave it this way or wait until such time that you can afford a character name change, or change it in TR. Again that is if the character world transfer system is exactly the same as LOTROs (of course in LOTRO they don't have TR, I was just listing all the ways I could think of a characters named could be changed in DDO).

This is incorrect. In Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO), when transferring a character from Server A to Server B, the system first looks for a First Name conflict. Last Names are ignored. If a First Name conflict exists and the character on Server B has not signed in for 12 months or more, the incoming character gets the name and the bumped character is renamed Name-1. If Name-1 already exists, the character is renamed Name-2 and so on. In this case, the renamed character receives a free First Name Change token.

If a First Name conflict exists and the character on Server B signed in within the last 12 months, the incoming character is renamed Name-1. If Name-1 already exists, the character is renamed Name-2 and so on. The renamed character receives a free First Name Change token.

I presume DDO will work the exact same way as the LOTRO community was largely accepting of the system described above during the server consolidation of late 2015 to early 2016. (LORTO went from ~30 to exactly 10 servers, not counting the Russian servers which also closed in late 2015.)

[Annex]

~ Updated Night Revels event

I look forward to it. Last year my characters had a very difficult time with the quests so I gave up after a couple hours. I enjoyed the quests but they where designed for much tougher characters than mine. Hopefully, this year goes better.


~ A new Questing hub

I am very hopeful for this feature, especially if it approaches the capabilities of LOTRO's Instance Finder.


~ World Character Transfers

I have used LOTRO's character transfer system extensively. Most players here should be pleasantly surprised.


~ Deity feats

I am sure many players will enjoy this. If possible, please consider adding a path for Free Spirits--those independent souls who refuse to worship anyone and make their own fate.


~ A new free dungeon

Wonderful. I hope it is something useful for Epic leveling. I have not bought of played any of your recent quests because I reset to L20 as quickly as possible after reaching L30.


~Character Bank Storage

Please consider giving us something like LOTRO's Vault Keeper / Shared Storage / Housing Storage interface. All DDO storage windows look like they were created in 1995 for 640 x 480 CRT monitors. They are really, really really dated, primitive, and hard on the eyes.


We're 100% interested in bringing Ravenloft to DDO, and are working through the process to make it happen.

I am personally tired of undead but as long as the quests are fun and useful for leveling I will buy and play them.


It remains an honor to be your Executive Producer, and I'll be back later this year to look ahead to 2017. Until next time, may the loot gods smile on you.

I am hopeful the story deities will smile on us. Maybe you could convince MadeOfLions and some of the other LOTRO writers to craft a few quests for DDO with more story depth. Thank you and good luck in your mission.

[Vespero]

Kobolds are everywhere in the Eberron setting, and should be playable.

[Roberto]

I think it's really cool that DDO will be utilizing the same system for character transfer that LOTRO utilizes. However what I think would be even better for those of us that play both DDO and LOTRO, is if they would come up with a way that we could link our account to both games allowing us to share TP between the two games. As a player of Turbine MMOs for 16 yrs, I can say without a doubt Turbine is my favorite company to game with hands down. However companys such as Daybreak Games and Perfect World Entertainment can seem to share their cash shop currency between their games, I really don't understand why DDO and LOTRO can not. I suppose it is not a matter of can not so much as will not, since there are LOTRO players who have grandfathered lifetime accounts earning them 500 TP every month without paying sub fee. However the number of lifers that still play LOTRO and that also play DDO are minimal so from a cost standpoint the "loss" would be negligible IMO (for all that's worth). It would be great if Turbine would at least consider this however.I suspect this can't be done for licensing reasons. some cash needs to go to WOTC, some needs to go to SZE (or MEE or whatever their name is now). An accounting nightmare.

[mikep]

The other thing I'd really, really, really, REALLY like is to have the TR cache "divorced" from the bank. Now, I'm not asking you to actually make any changes (although lots of changes there would be really nice), just... not have it auto-open every time you open the bank. I lock up for several seconds every time I do that. And then I realized I forgot to put something in the shared bank and have to do it again. And then I remember the Item of Awesomeness that I'd looted on another character for this one and have to open it up *again* to take it out. I don't need to check out the cache EVERY time I open the bank. I would just like the banker to have three options. Open the bank, open then TR cache, and close window.

This please.

[RistoffDervish]

This seems really cool. Is there any way for me to tell if my toons name is already taken on another server, prior to actually transferring it? For example, I have 3 toons named Chulka, Pulka, and Dulka. I want to transfer all 3 or none at all, without having to change a name. Can I somehow check if those names are taken on the servers I might consider transfering to?

I didn't read all the posts, so someone probably already said this, but you can go to the server and roll up a toon and try to name it Chulka, Pulka, and Dulka. If it lets you, the name is available.

[Sheabo1]

Ravenloft sounds good. I would love to see more of the old modules redone. They were fun, the B series, S series, X series. While I'm dreaming lets go big, how about Greyhawk!

[MichelOue]

I hope you've been enjoying... ...may the loot gods smile on you.

~ Sev

Enumerate gods that can help with collectibles, that redeem to character bonded items that the specific character can not use %0 chance use. only collect and destroy, enhance trading for (2gold irrelevant) value items, collected in numerous dungeons.

Dusd the luckiest warforged heroin Barbarian (t.y for indulging in fruitless funny role play any day ;)) N.G.

("whana be"=> different outcomes alignment quest outcome hero.roleplay C.E. vs N.E. vs L.G. if it's left to chat differences in text prose.... are we open to suggestions?)

P.s.: aside roleplay the development in my life time of DDO is very impressive, I recommend to all) ALL of it try it, love it!

[Fenix93]

This letter has really intrigued me a lot, the contents that are going to get on paper greatly improve the gaming experience and customization of the characters, I think it's for DDO for LOTRO this could be a year full of hope for a future in these beautiful MMORPG.

But back on the letter of DDO I would like to express my thoughts on the contents in the program.



~ Updated Night Revels event: First up, we’re working on an update to The Night Revels, our Halloween-themed event which debuted last year. We’re planning to add a couple of new quests along with a handful of new items that will focus on cosmetic fun. We’re expecting the updated Night Revels to debut later in October.

Personally I do not know what to say, and the first time I make this event so for mè and all new.


~ A new Questing hub: We've long wanted to help people figure out where to go and what to do when they come back to DDO from some time away, and this hub will help both them as well as anyone who'd like to get to quest entrances more quickly. We don't have a name for this new system yet, and we'll be talking a lot more about it in the coming weeks.

This maybe one of the points that intrigued me a lot, I think in fact one of the biggest problems of DDO is precisely the questing system !, too broad and confusing from my point of view (with regard Ebberon, the Forgotten are best made ), and and as I think (but hopefully we will) the intention of the turbines and to bring the istance finder system to LOTRO on DDO, which in many ways is not bad either, this would solve many problems among them, vagamenti empty an hour to find the instance, and unwanted kik because you do not know the entrance.

It would be a great thing, and also would make the group work, because in LOTRO if you use the instanced ottinene finder is a bonus to loot, has a coldown of almost 20m, but allows for more chances of finding rare items if you are in a group in the case of DDO if they want to use this system you might think to aim to use a 20% bonus to XP it would not hurt also because ... from my point of view is another problem and just the xp in DDO, too few instances and little xp to level in Heroic (unless you do not have the necessary pack) this crushes the experience.

This system will not only help the old players (and now will be loathe to do the same laps) but will give the chance has new players to feel comfortable in DDO and not lose volgio to play.

o help you better understand how it is structured the finder system instances LOTRO I'll show you in photos:

https://lotro-wiki.com/images/thumb/b/b0/Instance_Finder_Simple-1.jpg/200px-Instance_Finder_Simple-1.jpg

There are 3 options in the Tap, "Simple", "Advanced" and "specific":

Siple, you pressed to score the role that you want intrapprendere, DPS, Tank, Healer or Buffer, and after selecting the type of instance that you want to do when the system will have found another person who is trying group with findere instances those people or more will be put together in a party automatically directly into in the instance.

Advanced instead lets you choose the size of the party and the type of application and the difficulty you want to do, based on the number of players selected will be displayed automatically the list of possible instances, just click join and after confirming for each play the role it will enter automatically in the instance with the group of which it is part.

(Simple and Specific do not need to be in the group to use the system, except for Advanced that requires to be in the group in more than only in specific, and in siple is obtained of the istancefinder bonus).

The last the specific, puts you in the list all instances possible, you can select the number of players and the difficulty and mark the level of instance, this is the only mode in contrast to the Simple and Advanced where you can write the exact name of the instance to find it more easily.

But now let's move on with the other features in program...


~ World Character Transfers: We've heard from many of you that our process to transfer characters from one world to another needs to be more intuitive and take less time. Our new launcher-based system will send a character or characters from one world to another in seconds, and players will be able to pay for their transfers directly with Turbine Points. We think you'll like this transfer system, which is already in place in our sister game Lord of the Rings Online. Expect to see it debut by the end of the year.


Pretty and very simple, they want to bring the new transfer system adopted in even lotro of DDO

https://www.lotro.com/sites/default/files/transfer_01.jpg

From the server selection screen after you log in under the "play" button, there will be the "Transfer" option.

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/ah49/Stephie_Gordon/step%203_zpsvgllind0.jpg

First you select the server on which there is the pg that you want to transfer.

https://www.lotro.com/sites/default/files/transfer_03.jpg

Then you select or the Pgs you want to transfer.

https://lotro-wiki.com/images/thumb/a/a5/Character_Transfer_Wizard-4.jpg/300px-Character_Transfer_Wizard-4.jpg

Then you need to select the new server on which I would like to transfer characters.

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/ah49/Stephie_Gordon/step%206_zpssrjwuqed.jpg

last step in order to confirm the transfer.

https://www.lotro.com/sites/default/files/transfer_07.jpg

as you can see it was easier to let you see that explain, in essence, this system not only allows you to transfer the characters but also objects to the bank and currency, and not only that but also a whole guild of people.

So I am happy that you are trying to bring this in DDO.


~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.

here is another thing that intrigued me a lot ... and that I hope do like games like Neverwinter Night 2's, where you could choose the divinity and be able to get the passive bonuses.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/XBzxeWwo3S0/maxresdefault.jpg

as you can see this might be what the turbines is trying to do, it could then be transformed into a new character creation option where you can choose your own divinity and Ded there are an infinite number of gods!

this is something really brilliant and allows more depth in personalizazione of pg (so to speak).

although ... there written that will take feat obtaining favor with the god chosen, which will be a kind of "reputation" staff? and you are obtained after tot new talent points? can be and to be discovered, but as time and I intrigue me and I can not wait to learn more.


~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

I think that not only the bank needs a renewal but also the whole of DDO user interface that for me and too dated and too cumbersome, it takes something more modern (perhaps as close to the graphic style of the 5th edition of Ded), as regards the bank I hope that here do like LOTRO complete with a tab etc., it takes really a breath of fresh air in this system really ...



Looking beyond 2016, we know many of you have been hearing the rumors and teases about Ravenloft, so let's talk Strahd. We're 100% interested in bringing Ravenloft to DDO, and are working through the process to make it happen. We don't have an exact time frame in mind, although our current plan has it coming to DDO sometime towards the end of 2017. We can't wait to bring one of the most popular and classic adventures in Dungeons & Dragons history to the game.

We’re also planning for our 11th anniversary in late February! We’re hoping to debut a new playable race for the anniversary along with some new adventuring. We’ve been asking you whether you’d like to play a kobold or dragonborn, and while the final decision hasn’t been made, it looks like many of you would enjoy the dragonborn, so we’ll see what the anniversary brings.

Leaving out Dangeon free again and updates to monaco and Favored Soul, I curiously on the last two announcements, the first and Ravenloft that perhaps it could become the alleged 3rd expansion for quite some time, I felt that you wanted to do in DDO at the end of 2017 ... or another classic form.
?*
And then the announcement of the contents of the 11th anniversary ... I know that many are opposed to having Dragonborn in DDO but I find it a very nice idea, repeat it ad nauseum for me the Dragoniborns Ded year in the sense that are the cobolds should not be completely playable, first because they are the servants of the dragons Is the minions I never heard of cobolds adventurers except for Dekin of Neverwinter Night's but the rest are all evil henchmen and servants and bad.

Then that fatigue is history that everyone says ... I am afraid that the turbines do a bad job with Dragonborn, the turbines will take human model as a basis for making dragonborns etc ... guys some confidence until February there time we are still in October there are 4 months until the anniversary, a minimum of trust would not hurt, you will miss too much into disarray and disappointment.

[tyrionpres2016]

Will you ever do Sigil?

[MisosOrcus]

I hope you've been enjoying Against the Slave Lords, checking out our new Cannith Crafting update, and helping us celebrate a decade of DDO! I'm writing today to talk about our plans for the rest of the year and beyond.

Our goal is to release two updates before the end of the year. One of the updates will be larger, the other smaller, and combined they'll bring several things that players have long asked for to DDO. Since we are currently working on two updates, it isn't clear yet what will be in each update. We'll release things when they are ready, so if something isn't ready in time for next month, we'll see if we can finalize it for the following update in December.

Here's the list of Things We’re Working On:

~ Updated Night Revels event: First up, we’re working on an update to The Night Revels, our Halloween-themed event which debuted last year. We’re planning to add a couple of new quests along with a handful of new items that will focus on cosmetic fun. We’re expecting the updated Night Revels to debut later in October.

~ A new Questing hub: We've long wanted to help people figure out where to go and what to do when they come back to DDO from some time away, and this hub will help both them as well as anyone who'd like to get to quest entrances more quickly. We don't have a name for this new system yet, and we'll be talking a lot more about it in the coming weeks.

~ World Character Transfers: We've heard from many of you that our process to transfer characters from one world to another needs to be more intuitive and take less time. Our new launcher-based system will send a character or characters from one world to another in seconds, and players will be able to pay for their transfers directly with Turbine Points. We think you'll like this transfer system, which is already in place in our sister game Lord of the Rings Online. Expect to see it debut by the end of the year.

~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.

~ A new free dungeon: We’re expecting to release a new free dungeon in December that we think fans of A Study in Sable will enjoy. This quest sends adventurers to a popular type of pen and paper location that hasn’t had much representation in DDO. I’d say more, but I don’t want to spoil it.

~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

~ Monks and Favored Soul updates: Continuing our class work, you can expect an overhaul of handwraps in addition to updated enhancement trees for both classes.

Looking beyond 2016, we know many of you have been hearing the rumors and teases about Ravenloft, so let's talk Strahd. We're 100% interested in bringing Ravenloft to DDO, and are working through the process to make it happen. We don't have an exact time frame in mind, although our current plan has it coming to DDO sometime towards the end of 2017. We can't wait to bring one of the most popular and classic adventures in Dungeons & Dragons history to the game.

We’re also planning for our 11th anniversary in late February! We’re hoping to debut a new playable race for the anniversary along with some new adventuring. We’ve been asking you whether you’d like to play a kobold or dragonborn, and while the final decision hasn’t been made, it looks like many of you would enjoy the dragonborn, so we’ll see what the anniversary brings.

It remains an honor to be your Executive Producer, and I'll be back later this year to look ahead to 2017. Until next time, may the loot gods smile on you.

~ Sev

Most of us would much rather have Tieflings as a playable race then either the kobolds or the Dragonborn. The tiefling are now a classic PC race in D&D so it would make far more sense to bring them in.

[MisosOrcus]

Kobolds are everywhere in the Eberron setting, and should be playable.

Tieflings are far more interesting and look way better. Kobolds are pretty annoying and lame.

[yodaslack]

~ A new free dungeon: We’re expecting to release a new free dungeon in December that we think fans of A Study in Sable will enjoy. This quest sends adventurers to a popular type of pen and paper location that hasn’t had much representation in DDO. I’d say more, but I don’t want to spoil it.
~ Sev

Could be what? Maybe a Ravenloft adventure.