Real Producer's Letter

[Rys]

2017:


We'd like to look at Cleric, Favored Soul, Druid, and Artificer, and do other class work as necessary.

~ Sev

2018:


We also intend to add a third Favored Soul tree, update the Cleric Warpriest, and do extensive work on the Druid class. For Druid, we will be working on the core of the class, its animal forms, and both of its existing enhancement trees in addition to a brand new enhancement tree.

Sev~


Maybe this time around? Or 2019? 2020? Which one will it be? Taking bets, ladies and gentlemen!

And for a good measure:

2016:

We are also looking into giving Favored Soul its third tree.

~Sev

[Tyrande]

2017:


2018:



Maybe this time around? Or 2019? 2020? Which one will it be? Taking bets, ladies and gentlemen!

And for a good measure:

2016:

better start planning your prices. I see a 1 in 3 chance of winning; which is pretty high.

[janave]

Only the 2016 message was "promisy", the others sound like wishful thinking.

***

It would be nice if the classes received new trees by how badly they need it.

Druids can still build around meta. (altho quite broken)
Clerics got some domains at least, and have 3 trees.
Artificer got pretty solid buffs.

FvS?

Warpriest is probably a DoA tree, very weak, never seen an actual player maining WP for real.
AoV, workable but with some rather unusable design, plus very dated by now.


I think the logical order looks closer to this:

1 FvS
2 Druid
3 Cleric
4 Artificer

[Arkat]

1 Artificer
2 Druid
3 FvS
4 Cleric

[Ghwyn]

1 FVS
2 Eldrich knight
3 Druid

I think EK needs more work than most of the other trees.

[Jasparion]

1 Artificer
2 Druid
3 FvS
4 Cleric

I can only assume Devs mostly play Artificers because they have already had massive buffs in recent times yet look like they are getting the next update as well.

Druids could use Wolf form being fixed, but seem to be in a good place already for melee and casting.

Clerics have had a lot of work done (though done badly, given I bet 80% of the domains will never be taken).

Which leaves FVS. 5 or 6 years ago they were uber. In the last few years they have been terrible - except with the very best gear and a ton of past lives. They really should be the priority.

[zehnvhex]

To be fair the artificer pass didn't really help much pre-20. Endless Fusillade was made pretty baller but otherwise the class is still subject to the same problem that all ranged have in heroics (that is to say you still want a melee or caster to do trash clearing for you).

So they get ++ at killing bosses but clearing trash is still an absolute chore even after getting IPS.

But yeah...

I was hoping for more out of the producers letter. We know they're going to keep doing class passes as they can so that was all filler. Of course they're going to release more dungeons so that was more filler.

Where was the meat? The substance?

"We recognize that grouping sucks a big load of tide laundry pods right now so we're going to be looking into adding some sort of xyz to expand grouping ranges, alleviate the issues with finding/getting to groups and various barriers to entry."

"The UI is going to be a bigger priority this year. We saw how much everyone loved the ship buff consolidation so things like 4k support, scalable UI's, a return of being able to skin your UI, info conslidation (enhancements, ED's, reaper and more all now in one convenient location!), a complete revamp of the TR system so it can be more easily performed, tracked and actually has an in game tutorial for new players!"

"We realize that you guys have money you want to give to us so we're actually going to start making things you want to buy and not milking the 30 people every month who buy 500 sov pots and otto's boxes. Expect to see things like endless scrolls, 'platinum' seal hirelings, custom character paths and more!"

"Guilds have kinda been on the wayside for a very long time now. This year we're going to finally finish adding more ranks, allow renaming ranks, character notes, better officer/GL tools, more guild levels, new addons such as the ability to portal to your ship without having to /death, etc..."

"Crafting sub-systems have kinda gotten out of hand. LGS, slavers, Cannith, dragontouched, epic, Thunder-forged and now on top of that the switch to token-systems for raid loot. it's enough to make one go mad! We're going to do a significant consolidation allowing players to only have to keep track of 4 currency items."

You know...something like any of that. Instead the biggest bombshell they dropped was maybe they're going to move some walls/huts around in Jorasco so you can actually navigate the place while drunk?

[Jasparion]

"We realize that you guys have money you want to give to us so we're actually going to start making things you want to buy and not milking the 30 people every month who buy 500 sov pots and otto's boxes. Expect to see things like endless scrolls, 'platinum' seal hirelings, custom character paths and more!"

This is a big one. I bought the $40 Ravenloft pack because there was simply nothing worth getting in either of the other 2 offerings. They needed to offer unique things that would never be made available. I was happy to wait to get the Enhancement tree and I will buy the Iconic if I ever get around to playing all the other Iconics Ive never used.

I could have paid up to $130 if the content was better.

[PsychoBlonde]

1 Artificer
2 Druid
3 FvS
4 Cleric

I wouldn't have a problem with this, but I'd say the order kind of depends on their scheduling more than anything.

For my money, cleric is the least urgent to *fix*, druid the most. Arti doesn't need to be "fixed", the tree is just a big bonus, hopefully to round the dang class out so it's not just crossbow mania.

[PsychoBlonde]

To be fair the artificer pass didn't really help much pre-20. Endless Fusillade was made pretty baller but otherwise the class is still subject to the same problem that all ranged have in heroics (that is to say you still want a melee or caster to do trash clearing for you).

*snerk* BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA *choke* *dies*

I take it you're one of those sometime-arti players who don't use your runearm, then? And you've never tried a pure-caster arti?

Arti is disgusting. Heroics, epics, whatever you like. They're not stupid in that they have some drawbacks (you can overcome them, that's part of the fun!).

[Lonnbeimnech]

*snerk* BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA *choke* *dies*

I take it you're one of those sometime-arti players who don't use your runearm, then? And you've never tried a pure-caster arti?

Arti is disgusting. Heroics, epics, whatever you like. They're not stupid in that they have some drawbacks (you can overcome them, that's part of the fun!).

The only problem ranged toons have is bats.

[Claver]

The OP makes reference to plans in2016

You guys do realize that during the last few years Turbine ceased making DDO and new company was founded.

I imagine that transition of building a new company took a few man-hours :rolleyes:

That had to interfere every so slightly with plans to complete the 3rd FVS tree during that time period

[janave]

That had to interfere every so slightly with plans to complete the 3rd FVS tree during that time period

Which is a good reason to start with the FvS pass :)

[TitusOvid]

I think bug fixing should be a point in a producer's letter. But I realize that that would be a very daring and risky thing to do. I would invite even more flaming.
Don't you have to be flameproof as a producer?!

[Niminae]

Only the 2016 message was "promisy", the others sound like wishful thinking.

Wishful thinking doesn't belong in a letter detailing the work they plan to accomplish over the coming year. If you think otherwise, just think a minute: If wishful thinking is valid, then there is no real information being provided. It defeats the entire purpose of laying out your plans for the coming year if you can include unicorns and fairly tales without making any attempt to differentiate those statements from the ones concerning things you actually plan to get done.

Also this:

This one is strong in the art of devspeak.

Sev~

They deliberately obfuscate their communications. Why? Because they don't want their customers to try to hold them to their words. And notice that the above post doesn't even confirm that the poster being responded to was correct, just that they were clued into the doublespeak. It was just as meaning and accountability free as was the prior post.

If year after year any publicly company failed to predict their market performance in the coming year, either too low or too high because investors don't like either error, they would take a huge market hit as their punishment for getting things wrong. So they learn to get it right, or they fail and suffer the consequences of that failure.

SSG either doesn't think that there is any punishment for getting their predictions wrong, or they don't care. Because if they either thought that they would see lower revenues for making false predictions, or cared, they'd learn how to get it right. It would be a priority. But I don't see any learning taking place.


The OP makes reference to plans in2016

You guys do realize that during the last few years Turbine ceased making DDO and new company was founded.

I imagine that transition of building a new company took a few man-hours :rolleyes:

That had to interfere every so slightly with plans to complete the 3rd FVS tree during that time period

And you know what? That's a completely fair point. But it's not for you to make it for them. At any time when they were working on the spinoff to form SSG if they thought that the devs workload would be impacted, that's when there should have been a new Producer's Letter informing us of the revisions to the prior predictions due to this unforeseen and schedule destroying event. But that didn't happen, did it?

Instead we have an "Ask the devs" DDOCast where the devs said that for them the translation to SSG was seamless. They just did their thing and one day they got a new ID badge or whatever. So it looks like from the devs own statements that their work wasn't interrupted by all the financial/legal/contractual/licensing/whatever work the management team needed to perform. There's really no need to White Knight SSG when they don't see the need to do so for themselves. They supposedly wear big boy pants now and don't need others to try to speak for them.