No level cap increase for Feywild as per Cordovan's weekly stream

[ThomasHunter]

I’m kind of bummed. Figured there would be lots of new systems to explore and such. I also thought some of the purchases would be tied to “new”. Will there be a glut of level 29 gear? Will this exasperate the issue of farming potentially useless gear?

Note that I’m fully in still, just a bit bummed. Hopefully they come up with some new goodies for 29-30 still.

[rabidfox]

For those who didn't watch the live stream; in today's Cordovan weekly live stream, he announced that they've decided to not do a level cap increase with the Feywild expansion. He said they may do it down the line, but for now no level cap increase will be occurring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jW-mJwYlzo

[SirValentine]

Nice! We've got 13 Legendary Raids right now, 3 more coming in next update, and probably at least 1 in the expansion itself? Kudos for expanding the endgame instead of destroying it. Hopefully have learned from the mistake of Underdark, where they destroyed the endgame with the level cap increase that made all raids obsolete, and took like 7-8 years to finally stabilize and rebuild.

I wasn't planning to stick around for another post-Underdark-style dark age, but I guess I need to pay more attention to what's coming then.

[Yamani]

Nice! We've got 13 Legendary Raids right now, 3 more coming in next update, and probably at least 1 in the expansion itself? Kudos for expanding the endgame instead of destroying it. Hopefully have learned from the mistake of Underdark, where they destroyed the endgame with the level cap increase that made all raids obsolete, and took like 7-8 years to finally stabilize and rebuild.

I wasn't planning to stick around for another post-Underdark-style dark age, but I guess I need to pay more attention to what's coming then.

Expanding the end game? Just more powerful gear for level 29 and making Ravenloft/Sharn nothing but reaper xp.

[HungarianRhapsody]

That is wonderful news. Thank you!

[Fivetigers33]

The level cap increase is still coming, just not with Feywild.

[Codect]

That is a shame. Understandable though. There are arguments for and against increasing the cap and I believe more people (forumites at least) appear against it.

I'm mostly disappointed that it means we'll end up with **another** set of end game gear which makes most previous items redundant. I'd prefer the level cap increase along with appropriately levelled and powered gear so that current end game gear would at least be useful for levelling 29-32 or whatever. Ah well, hopefully the content itself is good fun. If it is anything like I imagine after playing the Housekeeping quest, it will be a great expansion.

[SirValentine]

Expanding the end game? Just more powerful gear for level 29 and making Ravenloft/Sharn nothing but reaper xp.

As opposed to how you imagine it would have played out with a level cap increase?

DDO still has existing and likely future new problems. I don't claim everything about Feywild will automatically be perfect just because it won't have a level cap increase. But it would certainly be far worse with a level cap increase.


The level cap increase is still coming, just not with Feywild.

I'll quit that game when I come to it. If they've put it aside for now, that's good enough for now. Hopefully they never pick it back up.

[TitusOvid]

I guess it means lvl incease got postponed. I vote for no increase at all but I am happy for every bit of time.
Thanks for the info. I hope there will be some more official information on the forum about that.

Cheers,
Titus.

[ggmarquez]

The level cap increase is still coming, just not with Feywild.

thank you. i was getting worried there. been looking forward to a cap increase for a while now. it's overdue imho.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Expanding the end game? Just more powerful gear for level 29 and making Ravenloft/Sharn nothing but reaper xp.

More content at end game of 30 is way better than a couple of end game raids with the current end game becoming just "leveling" content like what happened when MotU was released.

More stuff at current cap = good.

Current stuff being massively devalued because it isn't relevant at cap anymore (like the old S/S/S Epic items) = not good.

[Yamani]

More content at end game of 30 is way better than a couple of end game raids with the current end game becoming just "leveling" content like what happened when MotU was released.

More stuff at current cap = good.

Current stuff being massively devalued because it isn't relevant at cap anymore (like the old S/S/S Epic items) = not good.

Thats the problem its devaluing ravenloft to ziltch, sharn to just rxp farm's, gear will be invalidated entirely unlike what it would have been with a level cap increase as you would still need the gear to level in probably much harder content till you get to the level of the new gear.

You honestly think they'll release an expansion with weaker or similar gear power as a previous expansion? Ravenloft-> Sharn is a perfect example of that not going to happen. Least with the S/S/S system they still have gems like eSoS with how powerful melee is atm.

[Gniewomir]

For me - best news this years. To be honest i prefer no feywild rather than feywild + cap increase. :P

[SirValentine]

You honestly think they'll release an expansion with weaker or similar gear power as a previous expansion?


Weaker would be dumb, but, while I don't expect it, it is at least theoretically possible that they would release gear of similar power level.

Making a more complicated and interesting gearing puzzle, instead of just invalidating previous gear en masse, would be a good move.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Thats the problem its devaluing ravenloft to ziltch, sharn to just rxp farm's, gear will be invalidated entirely unlike what it would have been with a level cap increase as you would still need the gear to level in probably much harder content till you get to the level of the new gear.

You honestly think they'll release an expansion with weaker or similar gear power as a previous expansion? Ravenloft-> Sharn is a perfect example of that not going to happen. Least with the S/S/S system they still have gems like eSoS with how powerful melee is atm.

There is 1 item from MotU era that is still relevant. eSoS.

One item. Just one.

Ravenloft and Sharn are already just for RXP because you're not sitting at cap for Epic XP certainly. Even if the Feywild gear is slightly better, you'll still have builds that like some of the current gear IF the cap stays where it is. There are still builds that use Ravenloft sets even though Sharn is better for most builds.

[rabidfox]

Here's the official post from Cordovan; since it's on the Lamannia forums it doesn't show up on the normal dev tracker so people might miss it.
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/517827-U47-Preview-3-09-15-09-17/page4#post6360504

[Zeleron]

There is 1 item from MotU era that is still relevant. eSoS.

One item. Just one.

Ravenloft and Sharn are already just for RXP because you're not sitting at cap for Epic XP certainly. Even if the Feywild gear is slightly better, you'll still have builds that like some of the current gear IF the cap stays where it is. There are still builds that use Ravenloft sets even though Sharn is better for most builds.

Don't forget eRoss, eStorm, if you're including Motu then stuff like celestia, pinion, sireth.

[karatemack]

Weaker would be dumb, but, while I don't expect it, it is at least theoretically possible that they would release gear of similar power level.

Making a more complicated and interesting gearing puzzle, instead of just invalidating previous gear en masse, would be a good move.

Absolutely this!

Maybe we'll get "Major Artifacts", new filigree sets, different types of damage to mitigate, different types of bonuses ("Fey bonus"?).

I am really excited for more outward expansion and less upward. Thank you to SSG for listening to the players!!!

[Stravix]

Don't forget eRoss, eStorm, if you're including Motu then stuff like celestia, pinion, sireth.

None of those are used as anything but leveling items...

[droid327]

Yeah I'm hoping the delay gives us enough time to convince the devs to abandon the idea of level cap increase altogether. For both gameplay reasons and D&D lore, L30 should always remain the max numeric level you can achieve.

Endgame progression should be horizontal, not vertical. Or quasi-vertical, like Paragon levels in D3. But keeping the level cap at 30 keeps our current investment in gear protected, while still letting us chase new L30 gear to supplement it. Things like more L30 sets would give us way more flexibility with gearing...just adding L32 sets only serves to create another tier of gear Tetris and lock us into certain setups. Leave level-ups alone and just let us chase whatever new progression system they implement in Feywild.

The issue with horizontal progression up to now is they're too scared to make it an actual chase system the same way that TR or ETR is. Destinies are "done" after a handful of ETRs now that you dont lose actual Destiny XP on ETR. Sentience progression was never that slow with how much SXP you get from L29-30 items, and then WPM made it even cheaper with 1000 XP stones too, and then Minor Artifacts are basically 3 extra free fil slots. Reaper XP got cheapened with all their balance changes making R1 the default difficulty for vets.

I'd love to see the cap stay at 30 and then implement a new parallel progression system they could focus on in Feywild...maybe a perma-hireling you could TR and level up and gear out over time...maybe a TR-style "level and reset" system for incremental weapon improvement...maybe just a straight Paragon system with infinite levels giving small incremental bonuses, with XP costs increasing exponentially....but not something that most everyone will just be "done" with before the next content pack comes out.

[Mindos]

Thinking out loud:

Wishing we could combine servers (for grouping only) somehow. Just to see everything. There's a third party website that shows ALL the LFM's for ALL the servers ALL at once, and this is what SSG needs IN GAME. Then, the ability to temp copy any toon anywhere, and boom - we can all just group and everything looks so much bigger and fuller.

Grind systems, failures to prevent exploting bypasses, etc.

(skipping all the preamble about, well, everything) So let's get to it: Currently, we "earn" xp. And we keep it, forever. The one exception has been True Reincarnating. But all the other grinds in the game, are permanent "progress" Sentient xp, reaper xp, aquiring gear/weapons, crafting ingredients, etc. You put the time in, you get it. Forever. What if we changed that? Instead of year after year, introduciing more power and.. well, why not have decaying xp, not as a change to anything listed already, but to the next greatest thing release?

So you earn the "new-xp", and you spend it, but it's only temporary. It starts to decay. Could be anything, maybe it decays at 10 to 1 the rate you earned it? Wanna make a ton of "new-xp" and max out all the new things right away? Fine, but it will syphon off rather quickly. Don't play for a while after maxing things out? Slowly decay back to zero. (or maybe have thresholds that stay open, or maybe just the cores never decay but "new-ap" do?

Almost like a "stamina bar" you'd see in street fighter games, you could build up a "pool" of "new-xp", and have some time to spend it, or use it. Abilities in these "new-xp trees" could be very very powerful, maybe not even "tree" like. But instead you could change your "load-out" before the start of a quest, or at a rest shrine. Spending from your pool of new-xp as you use these new abilities.

I don't know. Just trying to think of ways to spice things up WITHOUT increasing levels and never ending progression of loot etc.

[ggmarquez]

every time the level cap has increased the game has improved. maybe the end game raid scene takes a hit for a time... but if we are being honest, no level increase would see epic systems sitting directly on top of each other. LGS on top of sharn which is already in conflict with ravenloft, which would also conflict with thunderforged, all crammed in on top of MOTU gear, epic 3BC gear, DOJ gear, WPM gear. without level cap increases every single piece of gear since MOTU would all be in direct conflict with every other. new gatekeepers gear? would have the same level requirement as TOEE gear. which would have the same level requirement as your baba/strahd raid gear. which would be competing against the new LOB/MA gear...

thanks but no thanks. please continue to consider raising the level cap at some point after FeyWild. Thank you in advance.

[droid327]

every time the level cap has increased the game has improved. maybe the end game raid scene takes a hit for a time... but if we are being honest, no level increase would see epic systems sitting directly on top of each other. LGS on top of sharn which is already in conflict with ravenloft, which would also conflict with thunderforged, all crammed in on top of MOTU gear, epic 3BC gear, DOJ gear, WPM gear. without level cap increases every single piece of gear since MOTU would all be in direct conflict with every other. new gatekeepers gear? would have the same level requirement as TOEE gear. which would have the same level requirement as your baba/strahd raid gear. which would be competing against the new LOB/MA gear...

thanks but no thanks. please continue to consider raising the level cap at some point after FeyWild. Thank you in advance.

You say "in conflict with" but I see "you have options between"

What's better about only having 1 set to choose from for your build rather than being able to mix and match from 3-4 viable alternatives?

[AbyssalMage]

I’m kind of bummed. Figured there would be lots of new systems to explore and such. I also thought some of the purchases would be tied to “new”. Will there be a glut of level 29 gear? Will this exasperate the issue of farming potentially useless gear?

Note that I’m fully in still, just a bit bummed. Hopefully they come up with some new goodies for 29-30 still.
/Dances with the fey!

This is the greatest news ever! Sorry you are bummed but I am personally against any level increase now or in the future. Honestly the only thing you could have stated that would make this better was that they solved the server/lag problem. Holy h*e* double hockey stick this is awesome news.

THANK YOU CORDAVAN*! (and all the other developers who delayed this, purposefully or not)

[AbyssalMage]

every time the level cap has increased the game has improved. maybe the end game raid scene takes a hit for a time...
Ummm...I wasn't around for the level increases to 20 but that was always the plan so I can only speak about MotU to present.

I actually supported the increase from 20 to 25. I wasn't really for the increase to 28 knowing the plan was to go to 30. The game actually suffered quite extensively during this time. Player retention dropped. Player discontent was at an all time high. The only thing that came from this period was removing the s/s/s system which on reflection they should have kept. They simply needed to increase the drop rates (and they should have done that when they did the House P revamp but that was an opportunity missed). The only other advantage that I remember from the level increase was the community was less likely to ostracize specific builds.



but if we are being honest, no level increase would see epic systems sitting directly on top of each other. LGS on top of sharn which is already in conflict with ravenloft, which would also conflict with thunderforged, all crammed in on top of MOTU gear, epic 3BC gear, DOJ gear, WPM gear. without level cap increases every single piece of gear since MOTU would all be in direct conflict with every other. new gatekeepers gear? would have the same level requirement as TOEE gear. which would have the same level requirement as your baba/strahd raid gear. which would be competing against the new LOB/MA gear...

thanks but no thanks. please continue to consider raising the level cap at some point after FeyWild. Thank you in advance.
That's called itemization. SSG (and Turbine before them) have done a very poor job implementing it. Your getting the same <censored> with a level increase. It just doesn't "compete" with your level 29 gear. The level 29 gear is still obsolete if you are being honest with yourself. But being honest is hard for a lot of people.

The greatest problem with MMO's is the need to raise the level +5 every year because players continue to lie to themselves thinking they are getting something new. Some of these games have even started removing the pretense and start you at some absurd level (level 65 and 70) because of the stupidity of such business models. I mean if you want to play such a game, by all means you are welcome to join them. Some even have hybrid F2P models. Heck, you can even do that in DDO by starting at 15, skipping 50% of the content and 40% of the xp (I think its 40% /shrug).

[Faltout]

GREAT NEWS!!!

I'm hoping that this will be only the start of an even longer delay leading to the eventual abandonment of the idea of cap increase.

[Yamani]

You say "in conflict with" but I see "you have options between"

What's better about only having 1 set to choose from for your build rather than being able to mix and match from 3-4 viable alternatives?

Name 1 expansion where the previous expansion gear wasn't 90-95% replaced.

[kmoustakas]

The problem with gear is they keep simply increasing the stats on the items instead of coming up with new items. So for the past few years, everything's just power creep power creep and more power creep.

I can see why they would do that, they want the people to buy the expansion and play it because if they are playing it then people who don't have the expansion are pigeonholed into buying it because that's what everyone runs.

I can already forsee the feywild items. +23 to a stat, +6 quality, +10 insightful and the raid(s) will be +24 to a stat, +7 quality, +11 insightful? Same for spellpower, spelldamage items, then the sets will be like 10% stronger than sharn, weapons will be +1w and +2 damage so something like 6w(1d8+6) before keen/vorpal etc?

[Monkey_Archer]

Excellent news. Will still have to wait and see how the power creep turns out, but I was not looking forward to quitting the game for another 4 years while they rebuild a new endgame. Plans Delayed! ;)

[ggmarquez]

The level 29 gear is still obsolete if you are being honest with yourself.

nah. my main has 175ish btc pieces in his tr cache. and i use them. certainly not all at once, or every life. but i won't be fooling myself into thinking i'll never need my esos again just because i have a reflection. im aiming for 2x oathblades this life. and i already have a pair of fellblades waiting. and i guess i'll need a soulrazor. so no, nothing is made obsolete by raising the level cap. sorry i just don't see it. if anything, we need more storage and a better system for sorting and stashing all this gear they will have to shovel in at the 29 mark now that the level cap isn't going up.

[Firebreed]

HOORAY! THANKS DEVS!

Next goals:
a) no level cap increase further down the line
b) don't make current level 29 gear/raids obsolete

How?
a) sideways progression (preferably something account-wide, unlike PLs)
b) more niche items! more holes to fill! more playstyles viable! more unique/interesting/active (but not OP) abilities on items!

Say it with me: People who settle on a build at cap shouldn't have to gear-tetris every 6 months to stay relevant! Let's break this toxic cycle!

Very pleased with most responses in this thread.

[Mglaxix]

nah. my main has 175ish btc pieces in his tr cache. That just makes me shudder

[Saekee]

This is great news

no level cap increase

There is way too much individual power loaded into this game and a dearth of grouping

We need nerfs nerfs nerfs

Nerf the reaper trees and in reaper mode put hard caps at different levels on all toon abilities like doubleshot, spell pen etc etc. Level the playing field a little while still giving veteran toons freedom to how they reach those hard caps e.g. PLs instead of a gear slot

[Silverleafeon]

The current Epic Destiny/Epic Spell-casting systems assume that the level cap is 25.
The further we move away from this number, the more distorted the system becomes.
Without serious time and consideration given to such subjects, a delay in level increase is a very good idea.

Also, if/when we do start increasing levels, doing only 1 at a time would seem much better (no more than 2 per raise at most).
At 1/expansion, that would leave another 10 years or so before level 40.

Also, current past lives should not be adjusted to the higher levels (giving some relief to new players).
Also, a Legendary Past Life system with high values would be counter-productive to attracting new players, so this is not a good goal to rush towards.
There is more than enough current past life power without building or adding more in the new future.

I hope the Developer realize that they need lots of time to revamp the current Epic systems to adapt to Legendary levels, and that is why the delay, (or that the delay is due to analyzing negative player feedback on increasing the level cap.)

[0ldschool]

This is great news

no level cap increase

There is way too much individual power loaded into this game and a dearth of grouping


+1. Horizontal progression is the way to go so that the player base is not stretched out even more thinly than it is now.

[kanordog]

GREAT NEWS

NO LEVEL CAP INCREASE

YES I AM SHOUTING

BECAUSE IT MEANS I CAN KEEP PLAYING*







*I would not do another grind to cap then grind for gear. I like that I cap my alts, get their personal gear and just play whatever I want with a playstyle I want. Wouldn't do it again, I'd just quit.

[Inanout]

Maybe they realized Feywild would not sell as well as it could.
For those apposed to lvl increase, may have held off buying pre-order or even at launch.
Now most are happy because no increase now and the pro side knows it is in the pipeline.

[Zeleron]

Maybe they realized Feywild would not sell as well as it could.
For those apposed to lvl increase, may have held off buying pre-order or even at launch.
Now most are happy because no increase now and the pro side knows it is in the pipeline.

The forum players are happy, the actual players are ...

[Mglaxix]

The forum players are happy, the actual players are ...

It certainly reduced the value of the Feywild expansion for me expecting $130 for an expansion with no expansion.... not likely

[Malaegys]

It would be great if they tweaked all the old Legendary endgame gear up to a standard power level when the new more powerful Feywilds gear comes out.
Simplifying the endgame tier system would help with this, and make that old gear at least quasi-relevant still (for some niche pieces).
Like when Feywilds comes out they upgrade all of the Legendary gear to the same stat level as Ravenloft, and call all of that Legendary Tier 1.
Then Sharn and the new raids about to drop are called Legendary Tier 2.
Feywilds is Legendary Tier 3.
Or even better they could just upgrade it all to the Sharn stat levels, and call it Tier 1, Feywilds Tier 2, and a future patch that will probably come before the next expac Tier 3.
This would increase the relevance of the old stuff, make Green steel decent again, but still make the newest stuff better.
All around adding longevity to the old content, which adds longevity to the over all game.

[rabidfox]

The forum players are happy, the actual players are ...

I'm just glad they're not rushing to do a level increase if they're not ready on the back end for it. Doing it poorly is far more damaging to the state of the game than delaying it. Whether vertical or horizontal, a well implemented progressive endgame is something worth waiting for it to be done just right.

[Firebreed]

GREAT NEWS

NO LEVEL CAP INCREASE

YES I AM SHOUTING

BECAUSE IT MEANS I CAN KEEP PLAYING*







*I would not do another grind to cap then grind for gear. I like that I cap my alts, get their personal gear and just play whatever I want with a playstyle I want. Wouldn't do it again, I'd just quit.

Preach it brother!

[Gniewomir]

It certainly reduced the value of the Feywild expansion for me expecting $130 for an expansion with no expansion.... not likely

You mean the fact that expansion will be exactly like last two expansions reduced its value for you, cause paying the same price for the same kind of stuff is a bad thing?

[Gniewomir]

The forum players are happy, the actual players are ...

And who are those actual players? The ones who agree with you?

[droid327]

Name 1 expansion where the previous expansion gear wasn't 90-95% replaced.

Sharn didn't make Ravenloft 95% obsolete. In fact I've seen some people commenting on Lama that the new update sets might actually let you go back to RL sets instead of Sharn because of the added flexibility of having new options at the same level range that Tetris better to provide equivalent set bonuses.

[Vorthian]

While I eagerly anticipate the level cap increase, a short delay is understandable. Hopefully not too long into q4 before it is implemented.

Cheers!

[Mglaxix]

You mean the fact that expansion will be exactly like last two expansions reduced its value for you, cause paying the same price for the same kind of stuff is a bad thing?

Ravenloft introduced sentient weapons, Sharn introduced minor artifacts what expansion is likely to follow in Feywild. Quests, Raids, Shifters, and an enchanment tree do not warrant a price tag of $130 to me at all. I hope SSG delivers some new type of game expansion they have taken level cap increase off the table at this point and that's fine but if they plan to sell lit as an expansion it looks a lot less likely I'd be paying that kind of money for those baubles. Gold seal hirelings, cosmetics, some pots and what not, do not any add any value, just more of the same old same old. Putting lipstick on a pig.

[mikarddo]

Weaker would be dumb, but, while I don't expect it, it is at least theoretically possible that they would release gear of similar power level.

Making a more complicated and interesting gearing puzzle, instead of just invalidating previous gear en masse, would be a good move.

With just similar power level the odds are many builds/players will either need nothing or not bother for tiny upgrades. With slightly larger power level the odds are most builds/players will need/want/bother to get many items from the new xpac.

I have run Sharn maybe 50-100 times already and Ravenloft even more. I have much less desire to keep those xpacs current than I have to want the new xpac to be "worth" running. If its sidegrades I am probably going to run in a few times - if its upgrades I am going to run it 50+ times.

Thats the question here. Do you make better loot and thus have people run the new stuff LOTS or do you not make better loot and have people run the new stuff a few times. There really is no way getting around that question - so wanting no real upgrades is essentially voting for an xpac that will be run significantly less than Ravenloft or Sharn were when they were new. Loot drives!

Sure, this does not apply to everyone but I am pretty sure it does apply to most players. If the loot isnt hot the desire to run new stuff is far less.

[Zakharov]

Best news I've heard this year! When they announced plans to raise the lvl cap it completely killed my interest in this game and I quit playing shortly afterwards. Now I may have to actually play the expansion when it releases instead of my previous plan which was wait 3-5 years for the new lvl cap to stabilize.

[KoobTheProud]

This is very good short term news because it increases the chances that Feywild will sell well, thus keeping DDO afloat. People weren't going to buy a level cap increase at this point.

Endless grind is a losing proposition because as it separates the player base out into unmanageable cohorts it is also a disincentive for the back end of those cohorts to keep grinding. What you wind up with is an avid but small group of players on the leading edge and their demands make the trailing cohorts increasingly unhappy until they drop out.

EQ has endless grind with vastly diminishing returns, as their AA (alternate advancement) system produces fewer and fewer rewards with greater XP requirements for each incremental point. EQ also has a monster >>> character model that makes equal level adventuring mostly require partners at some level.

WoW has achievement based grinding, with mounts and cosmetic items dominating the long-term grinding and an actual achievement score that has little to do with in-game power. Every x-pac there is a gear wipeout that requires completely re-equipping your character, making gear a source of limited power creep in the overall scheme. Every non-casual player is essentially at the same power level at the start of each x-pac and likely to maintain some level of parity with the field as long as they play non-casually during the live portion of the meta (3-6 months after release). Most non-casual players will catch up to the meta by the time the next x-pac is released in 2 years time. This is true even if they play at half the rate of the leading edge. What the leading edge is doing is grinding out gear to get an edge. Their investment in doing this will be wiped flat by the next x-pac although they will have real advantages in the interim.

The DDO model might be popular in South Korea and it shares many of the features of the leading MMO grinders in that meta. This is not South Korea.

[Bacab]

Expanding the end game? Just more powerful gear for level 29 and making Ravenloft/Sharn nothing but reaper xp.

You can have new gear that isn't "upgrades" but "Sidegrades" instead.

Like introducing sets for certain archetypes that help improve weaker classes.

Can use this to re-introduce old builds. Like what if there was a set that gave a hand to hand user "monk levels" as far as damage for character levels instead of monk levels. This would make Clonks more viable.

Or say divine based docents for Warforged/Bladeforged Favored Souls and Clerics and Paladins. Stuff that gives Healing Amp and Devotion or bonus turn attempts.

I have confidence in the devs.

I am sooooo happy they aren't raising the level cap.

Also, they can always make new enhancement trees (I would like Dwarven Defender, Gnome Tinkerer etc).

Can add new past lives to the Epic Past Life feats too.

[A-O]

A shame.

The game lives on its steady progression and past life system. Not it's raiding scene. It's nice having a bunch of raids out there to play, but I sincerely hope they introduce some new way of progressing. Loads of people are getting or nearing full completionist with 80+ reaper points.
Either by expanding reaper, adding a new TR system, or introducing a new overhaul of destinies to make some progression there.

[GeoffWatson]

I guess I'll have a look at the new raid loot, as it probably won't be all outdated by the next expansion.

[Gniewomir]

Ravenloft introduced sentient weapons, Sharn introduced minor artifacts what expansion is likely to follow in Feywild. Quests, Raids, Shifters, and an enchanment tree do not warrant a price tag of $130 to me at all. I hope SSG delivers some new type of game expansion they have taken level cap increase off the table at this point and that's fine but if they plan to sell lit as an expansion it looks a lot less likely I'd be paying that kind of money for those baubles. Gold seal hirelings, cosmetics, some pots and what not, do not any add any value, just more of the same old same old. Putting lipstick on a pig.

While i agree sentient was something new (tho personally i didn't enjoyed it, just one more very simple mechanic like all progression systems in ddo: farm xp, get more power), i don't understand your enthusiasm about minor artifacts. It's nothing new, it's not providing any new type of character progression, it's not even really interesting. It's just sentient weapon mechanic, but in different item slot. If you're trying to say that expansion is worth specific amount of money for you only if it'll give you some character power, then fine, you've got right to desire it. But lets not pretend minor artifacts are anything new and their existance made sharn arrival exciting. And even if we consider them as such - then last two expansions provided new mechanics without raising level cap. Thats the best example that feywild do not have to raise level cap to provide some kind of new progression. To be honest i would love to see expansion without more power creep, but sadly i doubt it, they'll be trying to sell it to people like you.

[Firebreed]

A shame.

The game lives on its steady progression and past life system. Not it's raiding scene. It's nice having a bunch of raids out there to play, but I sincerely hope they introduce some new way of progressing. Loads of people are getting or nearing full completionist with 80+ reaper points.
Either by expanding reaper, adding a new TR system, or introducing a new overhaul of destinies to make some progression there.

How is this still being discussed in <current year>?
The amount of people who have literally NO way to progress their character (and are thus the only ones justified in requesting a cap increase) are such a small percentage of the population, that raising the cap would objectively impact the game as a WHOLE negatively. It's such a selfish request.
And besides, there IS a mind-bogglingly simple solution for players who have indeed completed their character and want some new form of progression:

Roll an alt.

Can't believe these things are not common sense.

[Dreamforge]

This is a very good news. Hope they abandon the idea of increase level cap altogether. Several multiplayer games handle end game by introducing parallel progression. DDO could do the same. Maybe something like Legendary Destiny that level 30 character can twist for a legendary power (can be active or passive ability). Legendary Completionist unlocks 2nd slot (maybe not, since 2nd slot would be too OP). The Legendary Destiny Tree begins at center with the most generic power that all classes have in common (+100HP?) then the tree expands outward from this center node. The more specific power towards specific class would lie in the outer tiers. To get to the ability you want to unlock, you need to fill up all the nodes along the path. So it will take a long time to get to it if that ability is located in tier 3 or 4. This idea is not new, there are a lot of games using this progression method. For DDO, the progression would use Threads of Fate, not experience. This would also make raids become more popular. Here, SSG can reach the same goals with parallel progression: players have something to chase after and SSG can create financial opportunities (new store items). Raising level cap is practically a reset button. Some players may welcome it, some may not.

[Strider1963]

IMHO, without progression, the game will stagnate . We really dont need more level 29 gear to farm just to play gear tetris again. With a level cap raise, you would still be farming new gear, etc., but it would give you the feeling that you are improving and moving forward towards a new objective, not just staying in place. Kind of disappointing.

[SirValentine]

The game lives on its steady progression and past life system. Not it's raiding scene.


That was not true pre-MotU. But the raiding scene was destroyed in 2012, and has only slowly been rebuilding after level cap reached it's dev-promised "permanent" level of 30. The PL grind was the only thing left to do for years. Sadly, many of the players who preferred the raiding scene to the PL grind have left and not returned.



Loads of people are getting or nearing full completionist with 80+ reaper points.


I always wonder, what are they getting them for? I got the PLs I got specifically so I could be more effective in endgame, not to just get them.

[SirValentine]

IMHO, without progression, the game will stagnate .

Higher level cap is not the only form of progression. Progression that grows the existing game is preferably to me, over progression that invalidates the existing game.

[A-O]

How is this still being discussed in <current year>?
The amount of people who have literally NO way to progress their character (and are thus the only ones justified in requesting a cap increase) are such a small percentage of the population, that raising the cap would objectively impact the game as a WHOLE negatively. It's such a selfish request.
And besides, there IS a mind-bogglingly simple solution for players who have indeed completed their character and want some new form of progression:

Roll an alt.

Can't believe these things are not common sense.

This isn't an alt friendly game.

And it's pretty far fetched to say that it would "impact the game as a WHOLE negatively". I'm fairly sure most people think the game is better now than it was at cap level 25. Imagine if we never got reaper, cap increase, and racial TRs. You think a lot of players would still be here?
I'm not a completionist, and I have plenty of lives to get. It's not selfish. I'd say the selfish thing is only thinking about your precious raiding scene (lol). I'm lucky if there's 2-3 raids a night on Thelanis. Raids are done in guilds by a select few. Leveling is done by practically everyone.

Thankfully SSG have hte numbers, and know that it's the TRs that keep the game afloat, so they'll, regardless of what you selfishly want, introduce more ways to progress your character - I just hope it comes with Feywild (or close thereafter).

[Strider1963]

Higher level cap is not the only form of progression. Progression that grows the existing game is preferably to me, over progression that invalidates the existing game.

Sorry, but there is no progression in staying in place. Like farming sss at level 20, boring. Since many people are saying the game is way too easy, minor upgrades to gear will simply make it easier without new levels with higher difficulties.

[Hafeal]

Sorry, but there is no progression in staying in place. Like farming sss at level 20, boring. Since many people are saying the game is way too easy, minor upgrades to gear will simply make it easier without new levels with higher difficulties.

Well then maybe characters should age as well. Then they can progress to natural death as well. ;)

[Yamani]

You can have new gear that isn't "upgrades" but "Sidegrades" instead.

*snip*

The problem is this is an expansion not just an adventure pack.

Expansions need to be upgrades while adventure packs need to be "sidegrades" to the expansion. Any expansion that does not include some form of progression is just regression for its value.


As for other comments: Play an alt, I do, it's the only thing keeping me going atm...

[Firebreed]

This isn't an alt friendly game.

And it's pretty far fetched to say that it would "impact the game as a WHOLE negatively". I'm fairly sure most people think the game is better now than it was at cap level 25. Imagine if we never got reaper, cap increase, and racial TRs. You think a lot of players would still be here?
I'm not a completionist, and I have plenty of lives to get. It's not selfish. I'd say the selfish thing is only thinking about your precious raiding scene (lol). I'm lucky if there's 2-3 raids a night on Thelanis. Raids are done in guilds by a select few. Leveling is done by practically everyone.

Thankfully SSG have hte numbers, and know that it's the TRs that keep the game afloat, so they'll, regardless of what you selfishly want, introduce more ways to progress your character - I just hope it comes with Feywild (or close thereafter).

You're hopeless. Here are some facts:

1) The vast majority of people still have tons of progression left on their characters.

2) Having progression left on your character makes it selfish and illogical to ask for more progression before you have completed what's already in place.

3) Besides destroying the raiding scene (which exists whether you like it or not), raising the level cap does the following:
- 3a) Causes people's current end-game item builds to become obsolete and increases gear tetris, which is hated by many (by not raising the cap there are ways to avoid this, whereas raising it guarantees it)
- 3b) Adds substantially more power (-creep) to the game (raising the level cap VS adding a system that supports alts/creating items that fill holes or enable builds/adding sideways progression at cap that offers small rewards)
- 3c) Extends the experience required to reach the level cap (longer for the casual player to reach endgame)

4) The fact that "raids are done in guilds by a select few" (which is mostly false, but let's overlook that) is perpetuated by an ever increasing level cap, not the other way around. The longer the cap stays at one place the more people raid.

5) A level cap increase would indeed "impact the game as a whole negatively" because it is something that, as is evident in literally every thread about the topic, the majority of the community (from the sample of its forum users) does neither want or need (as opposed to a minority which want but do not need the increase due to a selfish and spoiled "I want more Warhammer miniatures even though I have 1000 unpainted ones at home!!" attitude - this doesn't include the tiny fraction of players who have indeed completed everything).

6) Comparing the state of the game now to the state of the game when the cap was 20 or 25 and saying one is better than the other is logically false: if such a comparison was to be made you'd have to compare the current state of the game with the state it could have been in had the cap not been increased and development had been focused elsewhere for the years that followed (which is impossible to know and thus the comparison is pointless).

7) Just because this game is not currently alt-friendly doesn't mean that it can't or shouldn't be.

8) If the few people who have completed everything there is to do on 1 character in this game would just roll an alt (with incentives from the devs if need be, but it shouldn't) then there would be precisely zero people left in need of a level cap increase.

People have forgotten what it's like to play games for the sake of playing games.

Sigh.

Hopefully this makes things abundantly clear.

[droid327]

Quests, Raids, Shifters, and an enchanment tree do not warrant a price tag of $130 to me at all.

Well good news then, those are part of the free update that comes BEFORE the expansion :)

[SirValentine]

Any expansion that does not include some form of progression...


Who has opposed "some form of progression"? Not me, and I haven't noticed anyone, but I might have missed one here or there.

But not all "forms" of progression have equal impacts.

[Gniewomir]

Sorry, but there is no progression in staying in place. Like farming sss at level 20, boring.

So runnning additonal xp train to get additional 1mln xp to get additional level and additional 10 hp is such fun thing to do? :P

The only real difference in ddo is between epics and heroics. Lvl 20 indeed brings a lot of changes, some builds might even be born at lvl 20 cause of opportunities gave by ed. But everything between 1-20 and 21-30 makes literally 0 difference in terms of mechanics, gameplay etc, it's just farming xp to get small benefits and better items, but if we speak about gameplay - it makes literally no difference. There could be even 100 heroic and 100 epic levels and it would not matter, cause they would be generic. Just look at epics: all 10 levels are hp/mp/rp/usp + few feats. Game is exactly the same at lvl 21 and at lvl 29, the only difference is gear power and those +10hp etc. per each level. Except very few good items it's no difference if you're level 22 or 28.

Personally i could understand raising lvl cap if ssg would be going to bring whole new mechanics, systems etc. Just like EDs changed whole ddo above lvl 20. I would still be against, cause until server merge population is too low to split, but at least i could understand that there's whole new progression stage coming. But adding level or two with few new generic perks and extra feat? No, thank you. It's boring.


Since many people are saying the game is way too easy, minor upgrades to gear will simply make it easier without new levels with higher difficulties.

And new levels will do exactly the same - make game easier. I don't think it's something to consider while debating, cause both options will make game easier, so everything is just about: do we want more levels or not.

[A-O]

Snip

I feel like this will be another tangential page long drama. So I'm going to leave this here with a closing remark.

A loud minority on the forums does not speak for the entire game's population. As is evident by the forum remarks of how THF would still be bad. Yet everyone who actually plays play THF now.
And I'm glad you have absolutely nothing to do with the game's development. Because it would be a deserted 1-man server if you did.

[SirValentine]

A loud minority on the forums does not speak for the entire game's population.


LOL, exactly.

[Firebreed]

I feel like this will be another tangential page long drama. So I'm going to leave this here with a closing remark.

A loud minority on the forums does not speak for the entire game's population. As is evident by the forum remarks of how THF would still be bad. Yet everyone who actually plays play THF now.
And I'm glad you have absolutely nothing to do with the game's development. Because it would be a deserted 1-man server if you did.

https://i.imgur.com/1Zfys90.png

[HuneyMunster]

Expanding the end game? Just more powerful gear for level 29 and making Ravenloft/Sharn nothing but reaper xp.

Personally I think they should update Ravenloft gear to be the same level of power as that of Sharn as well as maybe keeping Feywild at similar level. Items tend to become obsolete too fast for my liking.

[devashta]

This is absolutely the best news I have heard in all of 2020 - other than WoW reducing the level cap as well in Shadowlands. No more level increases, give us a legendary destiny system if you are hell bent on introducing legendary TRs and such, but keep the cap at level 30.

[Yamani]

This is absolutely the best news I have heard in all of 2020 - other than WoW reducing the level cap as well in Shadowlands. No more level increases, give us a legendary destiny system if you are hell bent on introducing legendary TRs and such, but keep the cap at level 30.

I'd be ok with that, but the only progression system they announced really was the legendary levels, with forum speculations of an ED revamp. Legendary destinies- legendary levels same thing to me.

[Zakharov]

For people looking forward to a lvl cap increase as a form of advancement, you understand that they could introduce new forms of advancement without raising the lvl cap right? These have been suggested here and in other threads many times. It may seem harder to implement but new systems to explore that don't change the lvl cap would keep more people playing instead of splitting up players further causing some % to leave.

My main concern is having people to group with - we cannot afford further division. I want to be able to regularly group with players who have a variety of play-styles regardless of where they happen to be in their advancement through the various game systems. Right now that only works after the lvl cap has held steady for several years, because everyone plays at different rates. Some friends/guildies take years to lvl up a character but I still want to group with them at weekly raids. Raising the lvl cap will cause some of those players to leave in frustration just like it has the last few lvl cap increases.

Unless we get some kind of City of Heroes style auto scaling system, grouping will always be tied to character lvl in some way. Therefore, new advancement systems should not be connected to increasing character lvl or we will have less people to group with.

[ggmarquez]

For people looking forward to a lvl cap increase as a form of advancement, you understand that they could introduce new forms of advancement without raising the lvl cap right?
yep. and we could all still be clinging to a level cap of 10. how wonderful it would feel, everyone would hit cap in a few short hours and be ready to raid... but tempest spine and von5 are pretty played out at this point. sure, you could try to cram 10 years worth of content into a level 10 cap. does that sound great or what? hey guys... wanna run legendary shroud instead of heroic tempest spine? they're the same level after all...


Therefore, new advancement systems should not be connected to increasing character lvl or we will have less people to group with.

you can put advancement systems where-ever you like. add heroic sentient weapons... add heroic destiny spheres... whatev's. as long as characters can continue to advance and grow in level as well... i'm tired of only having 30 steps to climb. adding 2 more won't be as big a burden as some would have you believe. i want to climb those 2 extra steps and see what awaits me there. even if it's just a couple new raids and a quest arc initially. because every initially turns into an eventually. and that eventually sounds really good to me. if you have a hard time finding groups, it is certainly possible adding a whole 2 more levels will make it harder for you. but, it sounds to me like the problem is cap players vs tr players. realistically, if the cap goes up, cap players just hang out at 32 instead of 30. its not like you've convinced those players to stop raiding/highskulls and start throwing up lfm's for whatever lvl range your own character is at the moment. no, i think its far more likely cap players will stay cap players even if the level cap increases. so the problem is really how to fill groups when a portion of the population would rather stay at cap. and that's a different question all-together.

[Iriale]

it is the best news I have read in years in relation to the game. Now the devs just need to set the idea on fire and forget it forever

[Mglaxix]

While i agree sentient was something new (tho personally i didn't enjoyed it, just one more very simple mechanic like all progression systems in ddo: farm xp, get more power), i don't understand your enthusiasm about minor artifacts. It's nothing new, it's not providing any new type of character progression, it's not even really interesting. It's just sentient weapon mechanic, but in different item slot. If you're trying to say that expansion is worth specific amount of money for you only if it'll give you some character power, then fine, you've got right to desire it. But lets not pretend minor artifacts are anything new and their existance made sharn arrival exciting. And even if we consider them as such - then last two expansions provided new mechanics without raising level cap. Thats the best example that feywild do not have to raise level cap to provide some kind of new progression. To be honest i would love to see expansion without more power creep, but sadly i doubt it, they'll be trying to sell it to people like you.


Ravenloft introduced sentient weapons, Sharn introduced minor artifacts what expansion is likely to follow in Feywild. Quests, Raids, Shifters, and an enchanment tree do not warrant a price tag of $130 to me at all. I hope SSG delivers some new type of game expansion they have taken level cap increase off the table at this point and that's fine but if they plan to sell lit as an expansion it looks a lot less likely I'd be paying that kind of money for those baubles. Gold seal hirelings, cosmetics, some pots and what not, do not any add any value, just more of the same old same old. Putting lipstick on a pig.


Maybe before you act like I am asking for power creep, level cap increase, and those things that you are against you should read the bold statement in my response to you. I am merely pointing out that and expansion by definition would mean expanding the game in some form or fashion not asking us to merely cough up $$$ for something that does not expand the game in some way. An expansion should include something that expands the game not merely add a few trinkets and baubles. Cosmetics, gold seal hires, some pots thrown in for good measure, a wilderness, a few raids and a group of quests. That is a quest pack not an expansion.

Menace of the Underdark - raised cap to 25, added epic destinies

Shadowfell - raised cap to 28, added iconic races

Ravenloft - added sentient jewel system

Sharn - Added minor artifact system

Feywild - as of yet no expansion to the game announced

These expansions all expanded the game from what I see coming in Feywild at this point it will not be delivering any expansion to the game in any form. I don't personally care which way SSG expands the game but if SSG expects people to pay for an expansion they should expand the game in some way not try to sell quest pack that is simply larger than average at the price of an expansion. Clearly SSG can expand the game horizontally vs vertically it doesn't matter much to me either way. I'd pay $130 for a full on QOL expansion that covered from level 1 to 30 and cleared up classes, enhancements, crafting, gear, quests, and any number of other things to make it financially worth while for SSG to do so. Let's not get carried away and expect ladders or anything to crazy to get fixed.

And don't kid yourself that grouping will fracture more simply by raising level cap after all over 95% of the content if not more can be completed by two people which is a group. Even cap raids are being completed on reaper now by two people. The fact that some people can and some people can't does not really matter. Lowering the difficulty to complete is not a game breaker it's not like BB matters anymore.

I almost never fail to fill an LFM at any level at anytime on my home server and no I don't use private channels to fill them I post and go. The reason people can't fill LFM's are many and varied but when I see party decides difficultly that just means whoever it is doesn't feel comfortable enough to say Normal, Hard, Elite, or Reaper + skulls and go meaning they don't get my attention at all. I post R4 and will only be upping the skulls based on party performance. I post LFM's that show every quest at that level I will be running in the order I will be running them thus people know and understand that I have a plan and feel comfortable enough to know I can run the content and don't need them to start that is because a group is two and I don't need anymore than that to compete and complete.

Clearly the grouping would benefit from reducing the number of servers having been on hardcore and seeing the sheer number of people on that server but until that happens if it ever does it's just a pipe dream. After all there are a lot of issues that would have to be resolved first before anything like that would take off. People are attached to their high level guild, character names, huge piles of trash in their tr cache to name a few. You gonna give all those things up if your server is merged... if not why are you expecting anyone else to its all over the forums people wanting names and not wanting to give up names, guilds, tr cache. Me personally I don't get attached to things, I tr consistently with less than 80 items and could reduce this by at least 30 stacks of yugo pots at any time. Put up a new server let anyone transfer for free and I am all in. That does not mean I will abandon my home server completely until such as time as I felt like the new server was populated to a decent level.

[FlavoredSoul]

I'm glad to hear they've reconsidered the level cap raise for feywild, even if it's still in the long term plans, while my opinion on it has softened from "hard no, will kill the game" to "probably a very bad idea to do now".

regardless of the merits and detriments of raising the level cap in general, doing so 3-4 months after releasing 3 legendary raids and a whole alchemical crafting system feels like a really bad idea.

My biggest issues with a level cap raise are:

A. spreading people out over more levels without a server merge/megaserver

B. Old content & Gear invalidated before enough content is out to replace it

C. a new round of gear tetris.


A. is obviously solved by delaying level cap raises until after a megaserver is at least in their sights instead being a far off "maybe".

B.1 no real way to fully solve this, perhaps it could be mitigated somewhat if they greatly reduce powercreep on ML30+ gear (compared to ML29) going forward, so current gear isn't totally garbage in comparison, if feywild raised the cap to 32 but it's gear was all ml30 and only slightly better than sharn's ml29, ideally less of a difference to sharn than sharn was to ravenloft. Gear being invalidated is kinda a eventuality if the level goes up and expansions keep coming out, but slowing it down could be enough to make it bearable.

2. alternative solution would be non-gear based power creep, if feywild raised the cap to 30 but all it's gear was ml29 scaled to sharn power levels but it also provided another source of power to sell xpacks For example: (another type of stacking spark of memory for sentient weapons, or maybe one for minor artifacts), more filigree sets, and an updated augment system with ML30+ augments that would take the place of gear upgrades.

C. is basically unsolvable, though could be lessened by the augment solution for B.2.

[carsonfball]

thank you. i was getting worried there. been looking forward to a cap increase for a while now. it's overdue imho.

Same. Although, I'm still running through racial past lives so I wouldn't be able to do much with a higher cap for awhile anyway.

[carsonfball]

For me - best news this years. To be honest i prefer no feywild rather than feywild + cap increase. :P

I prefer Feywild + cap increase, but would rather have Feywild with no cap increase than no Feywild. I guess in ranked voting (based off of two data points), Fewild with no cap increase is the winner.

[carsonfball]

maybe just a straight Paragon system with infinite levels giving small incremental bonuses, with XP costs increasing exponentially

That wouldn't be a bad idea. They could even set caps on it and raise the cap periodically if they wanted a cap progression over time. And to keep people at 30, there could be a requirement of not getting paragon xp until you were capped and if you reincarnated, you lost all benefits until you capped again. (like destinies and level 20).

[AbyssalMage]

I feel like this will be another tangential page long drama. So I'm going to leave this here with a closing remark.

A loud minority on the forums does not speak for the entire game's population. As is evident by the forum remarks of how THF would still be bad. Yet everyone who actually plays play THF now.
And I'm glad you have absolutely nothing to do with the game's development. Because it would be a deserted 1-man server if you did.
I'm sorry, THF is still bad. The mechanic that wasn't Quality Controlled has allowed it to be better than what it was intended. You know, what the developers consider a bug and will be fixed in a later patch when it serves their interest. Granted I am enjoying the bug a lot. But once they "fix" it THF will be once again horrible except at 29/30 and then I'm not sure where it will be simply because the current bug makes it so juicy it's hard to separate the bad from the absurd.

And for the record I was on record as saying the THF change was a nerf. And everything I have seen supports that when you remove the bug. Unfortunately only one build that I know of got the inglorious distinction of not benefiting from the bug other builds are so reveling in.

[ggmarquez]

Old content & Gear invalidated before enough content is out to replace it


no real way to fully solve this, perhaps it could be mitigated somewhat if they greatly reduce powercreep on ML30+ gear (compared to ML29) going forward, so current gear isn't totally garbage in comparison, if feywild raised the cap to 32 but it's gear was all ml30 and only slightly better than sharn's ml29, ideally less of a difference to sharn than sharn was to ravenloft. Gear being invalidated is kinda a eventuality if the level goes up and expansions keep coming out, but slowing it down could be enough to make it bearable.

but this is actually opposite from the reality. if they try to forcibly insert yet another expac worth of 29 gear into the already over-full pool of level 29 items, it will literally invalidate the older pieces. example : my reflection of blackrazor would become useful for levels 28-32 with a cap increase. if they don't raise the cap, but add a new greatsword that is better than reflection, i will no longer use reflection. if they release a new greatsword that isn't better than reflection, i won't want it and will have no interest in farming for it. if they don't release a new greatsword, i might not even buy the expac, just wait a few months and grab it for points i'll earn in the interim. now apply that same logic to every piece of gear, because that's basically what will happen.

[Ratbait]

Why not just tie it to gear? Have higher tiers of epic gear that can only be equipped after getting so much legendary experience, or maybe gear that can only be unlocked for wear after spending legendary experience.

[karatemack]

I'd like to acknowledge the frustrations of other players who were really looking forward to a level-cap increase. Character customization is a hallmark feature in DDO, and so it makes sense that many would look forward to new systems/features/methods of progressing a character. I think there are ways for future ideas to be implemented with broader support from the players, but would require folks to be consistent in their thinking.

For instance, if you're in favor of introducing new layers of grind- and argue for this on the basis of it being more appealing to play through the new grinds than the old grinds, then please be more supportive of folks who post their thoughts regarding reducing the old grinds. Currently, players are spread out across heroic, epic, reaper/non-reaper and hardcore settings. Adding another segment into which players will separate themselves will do nothing to improve the issue of a playerbase already spread too thin. New layers of power creep also increase the gap between new/returning players and folks who have played all along. I won't go into specifics on these topics as to not de-rail the current thread... but please re-consider your thoughts towards suggestions which would actually lead you closer to your stated goals. All too often, folks on these boards argue for a particular goal which rejecting any possible means by which we could achieve it.

[droid327]

That wouldn't be a bad idea. They could even set caps on it and raise the cap periodically if they wanted a cap progression over time. And to keep people at 30, there could be a requirement of not getting paragon xp until you were capped and if you reincarnated, you lost all benefits until you capped again. (like destinies and level 20).

Doesnt have to be capped, it can just be a soft-cap from the exponential XP scaling. Hard caps create a "done/not done" dichotomy that changes how players would approach the system.

Then whenever they wanted to "raise the cap", they can just tweak the formula so the soft cap goes up a little. That'd have the added benefit of making it easier for new players to catch up too later on, since they could earn the earlier ranks quicker than the original vets did, avoiding some of the power-gap issues in actual leveling and TRing.

[gaffneyks]

You're hopeless. Here are some facts:

1) The vast majority of people still have tons of progression left on their characters.

2) Having progression left on your character makes it selfish and illogical to ask for more progression before you have completed what's already in place.

3) Besides destroying the raiding scene (which exists whether you like it or not), raising the level cap does the following:
- 3a) Causes people's current end-game item builds to become obsolete and increases gear tetris, which is hated by many (by not raising the cap there are ways to avoid this, whereas raising it guarantees it)
- 3b) Adds substantially more power (-creep) to the game (raising the level cap VS adding a system that supports alts/creating items that fill holes or enable builds/adding sideways progression at cap that offers small rewards)
- 3c) Extends the experience required to reach the level cap (longer for the casual player to reach endgame)

4) The fact that "raids are done in guilds by a select few" (which is mostly false, but let's overlook that) is perpetuated by an ever increasing level cap, not the other way around. The longer the cap stays at one place the more people raid.

5) A level cap increase would indeed "impact the game as a whole negatively" because it is something that, as is evident in literally every thread about the topic, the majority of the community (from the sample of its forum users) does neither want or need (as opposed to a minority which want but do not need the increase due to a selfish and spoiled "I want more Warhammer miniatures even though I have 1000 unpainted ones at home!!" attitude - this doesn't include the tiny fraction of players who have indeed completed everything).

6) Comparing the state of the game now to the state of the game when the cap was 20 or 25 and saying one is better than the other is logically false: if such a comparison was to be made you'd have to compare the current state of the game with the state it could have been in had the cap not been increased and development had been focused elsewhere for the years that followed (which is impossible to know and thus the comparison is pointless).

7) Just because this game is not currently alt-friendly doesn't mean that it can't or shouldn't be.

8) If the few people who have completed everything there is to do on 1 character in this game would just roll an alt (with incentives from the devs if need be, but it shouldn't) then there would be precisely zero people left in need of a level cap increase.

People have forgotten what it's like to play games for the sake of playing games.

Sigh.

Hopefully this makes things abundantly clear.

Best Post I have read in a while!

[GramercyRiff]

If this means they're not doing that freaking terrible idea of changing how you get ED power then I'm all for no level cap increase.

I also agree that a level cap increase could kill raids that already seem really dead to me. I'm on Gland trying to do Baba and no one lfms this thing. This is with the cap being 30. I'll have to lfm it myself and I've done it one time and don't really understand the madness that is going on. I'm sure it's ez to understand but I need more reps in there. I've always depended on the kindness of strangers.

[Stravix]

If this means they're not doing that freaking terrible idea of changing how you get ED power then I'm all for no level cap increase.

I also agree that a level cap increase could kill raids that already seem really dead to me. I'm on Gland trying to do Baba and no one lfms this thing. This is with the cap being 30. I'll have to lfm it myself and I've done it one time and don't really understand the madness that is going on. I'm sure it's ez to understand but I need more reps in there. I've always depended on the kindness of strangers.

I see Baba LFMs on Sarlona all the time, and I thought Sar was a relatively unpopulated server compared to Gland.

[GramercyRiff]

I see Baba LFMs on Sarlona all the time, and I thought Sar was a relatively unpopulated server compared to Gland.

brb transferring to Sarlona. It's possible I just miss the lfms of course.

[Chai]

A loud minority on the forums does not speak for the entire game's population.

Yet many of the nerfs couched in terms of balance happen due to this groups feedback. The gutting of stealth play, the hilarious nerf to ranged play...


As is evident by the forum remarks of how THF would still be bad. Yet everyone who actually plays play THF now.

Precisely why the "ranged should always be worse than melee" mentality doesnt work. We have observed the pattern of the pendilum swinging too far in the other direction often enough to understand another meta shift was coming, and even had they not nerfed the entire ranged style the majority would STILL be playing THF due to how much power they added to it.


And I'm glad you have absolutely nothing to do with the game's development. Because it would be a deserted 1-man server if you did.

Often said by ForumDDO - has yet to occur in actual in game DDO. Sure, those who actually use the exe rather than a web browser to enter the game have observed net loss attrition, but not the mass exodus often predicted if ForumDDO doesnt get their way.

[Erokir]

Thats the problem its devaluing ravenloft to ziltch, sharn to just rxp farm's, gear will be invalidated entirely unlike what it would have been with a level cap increase as you would still need the gear to level in probably much harder content till you get to the level of the new gear.

You honestly think they'll release an expansion with weaker or similar gear power as a previous expansion? Ravenloft-> Sharn is a perfect example of that not going to happen. Least with the S/S/S system they still have gems like eSoS with how powerful melee is atm.

So many abbreviations... I can't guess what this one means.

[ggmarquez]

So many abbreviations... I can't guess what this one means.

shard / scroll / seal. it's how you used to make epic level gear back in the dark days.

[timmy9999]

Not sure what there plans are for content with the level increase. I guess they could make all the level 30-32 quests scale higher so we still have somthing to to.

[MaeveTuohy]

Very please to read about this!

Make more content for the current levels.

Roll back reaper trees to make existing upper tier content more challenging for the minority that find it not challenging enough.

[devashta]

Not sure what there plans are for content with the level increase. I guess they could make all the level 30-32 quests scale higher so we still have somthing to to.

This is exactly why we do not want level increase. The game has taken many years to get stabilised at level 30, it was madness to even contemplate a level cap increase.

Scrap this crappy idea, give us a legendary ED or a paragon system (as quoted by someone above) but keep the level cap at 30. There are lot of ways to sell Legendary Ottos boxes and XP pots without raising the level cap - be creative SSG or hire me, will show you the $$$ (for a right price of course) :cool:

[Erokir]

Say it with me: People who settle on a build at cap shouldn't have to gear-tetris every 6 months to stay relevant! Let's break this toxic cycle!

But, you're going to have the same problem when the Feywild expansion drops gear that's superior to your current gear.

I've read the first two pages of the comments in this thread, and I honestly don't understand all of the opposition to a cap increase. I'm not even trying to argue the point; I'm honestly just asking for an explanation that makes sense, because the gear-obsolescence argument doesn't make sense. Expansions that don't contain a cap increase will nonetheless contain lvl 29 gear that renders present lvl 29 gear obsolete.

The argument that a cap increase would diminish the relevance of current endgame raids makes some sense, but I still don't see how that's really a problem, being that the new lvl 30+ content would contain new raids that would become the relevant exciting endgame content. So, a lvl cap increase won't change the current structure of having challenging endgame raids; the new endgame raids will just be higher level and more challenging than present endgame raids, which doesn't seem like something that longtime players would be opposed to.

So, I honestly don't get it. Can someone explain the opposition to cap increase in a way that makes sense?


Edit: OK, the reasons below make sense. The others not so much.

Originally Posted by Firebreed
4) The fact that "raids are done in guilds by a select few" (which is mostly false, but let's overlook that) is perpetuated by an ever increasing level cap, not the other way around. The longer the cap stays at one place the more people raid.

8) If the few people who have completed everything there is to do on 1 character in this game would just roll an alt (with incentives from the devs if need be, but it shouldn't) then there would be precisely zero people left in need of a level cap increase.

Leaving the cap at 30 would give more players time to catch up, and as such, would be in furtherance of the sociability of the game, which is a good point. I don't know that it totally outweighs the excitement of raising the cap, but it's a decent argument and it makes sense.

[Draxis]

RIP Sharn

Since they're going to raise lvl cap anyway can we just not release Feywild until the level cap is raised? I almost feel cheated for buying Sharn now that most if not all the loot will be invalidated by Feywild loot. I have no idea why anyone would ever consider buying or running Sharn once Feywild drops. At least with the lvl increase you'd need the Sharn loot/xp to make getting the Feywild loot possible.

[KoobTheProud]

This is exactly why we do not want level increase. The game has taken many years to get stabilised at level 30, it was madness to even contemplate a level cap increase.

Scrap this crappy idea, give us a legendary ED or a paragon system (as quoted by someone above) but keep the level cap at 30. There are lot of ways to sell Legendary Ottos boxes and XP pots without raising the level cap - be creative SSG or hire me, will show you the $$$ (for a right price of course) :cool:

If DDO gets destabilized again I doubt very much that it will regain equilibrium after that fact. There just aren't enough players to weather a mass exodus from the game at this point and there are a lot of other things to do online in 2020.

I'm very glad that management decided not to roll the dice on a level cap increase because I see that as a highly destabilizing event and one likely to kill the game.

[Firebreed]

But, you're going to have the same problem when the Feywild expansion drops gear that's superior to your current gear.

I've read the first two pages of the comments in this thread, and I honestly don't understand all of the opposition to a cap increase. I'm not even trying to argue the point; I'm honestly just asking for an explanation that makes sense, because the gear-obsolescence argument doesn't make sense. Expansions that don't contain a cap increase will nonetheless contain lvl 29 gear that renders present lvl 29 gear obsolete.


RIP Sharn

Since they're going to raise lvl cap anyway can we just not release Feywild until the level cap is raised? I almost feel cheated for buying Sharn now that most if not all the loot will be invalidated by Feywild loot. I have no idea why anyone would ever consider buying or running Sharn once Feywild drops. At least with the lvl increase you'd need the Sharn loot/xp to make getting the Feywild loot possible.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post Erokir.

The problem with the above excerpts is that you both take for granted that a Feywild expansion that doesn't contain a level cap increase will unavoidably make current equipped items obsolete, which, as I've explained in my first (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/518114-No-level-cap-increase-for-Feywild-as-per-Cordovan-s-weekly-stream?p=6360630&viewfull=1#post6360630) and main posts (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/518114-No-level-cap-increase-for-Feywild-as-per-Cordovan-s-weekly-stream?p=6360823&viewfull=1#post6360823) does not have to be (and shouldn't, if the devs don't lack foresight) the case.

I also urge to re-read points 1, 2 and 5 again, as I feel they are of vital importance to understanding the absurdity of the pro-level-cap-increase side.

[timmy9999]

Stop stressing about it, we need extra level for advancement. Don't be scared of change.
Majority of quests are cap are lv 31 to 32. I doubt the gear is gonna be much better or changes. Perhaps a lv 32 toon with reasonable gear ,not all the past lifes will get a finger of death off in sharn. Op players will breeze through the sharn dc with out boosts on other classes. I doubt they will make all the content redundant...if the past give us any idea of what to come.
It will most likey be every lv 30 _32 quests made to lv 33 to 35.. same old bat channel, same old bat time...
We will be all running an upgraded version of babba, project nem for the next 5 years all good :)

Typically what happens when game lv advance is its a way to make everyone weaker. Reset the playing field. The gear will be terrible for the dungeons, and will be challenging. Players have become to powerful for the game. Advance the level...weaken the tribe.

[ggmarquez]

Here are some facts:
i didn't want to have to do this because this is obviously a troll post... but...


1) The vast majority of people still have tons of progression left on their characters.
the vast majority of people can speak for themselves. you can too :)


2) Having progression left on your character makes it selfish and illogical to ask for more progression before you have completed what's already in place.
this game doesn't cater only to the people who still have progression left on their characters. and it doesn't cater only to the people who have finished with all progression on all of their characters. it caters to everyone. calling people you disagree with selfish and illogical is both selfish and illogical.


3) Besides destroying the raiding scene (which exists whether you like it or not), raising the level cap does the following:
- 3a) Causes people's current end-game item builds to become obsolete and increases gear tetris, which is hated by many (by not raising the cap there are ways to avoid this, whereas raising it guarantees it)
- 3b) Adds substantially more power (-creep) to the game (raising the level cap VS adding a system that supports alts/creating items that fill holes or enable builds/adding sideways progression at cap that offers small rewards)
- 3c) Extends the experience required to reach the level cap (longer for the casual player to reach endgame)
nothing destroys a raiding scene more thoroughly than a group of players who share this exact mentality. raid or don't. it's up to you. but don't come here telling me and everyone else that you can't raid just because the level cap increased. please... i've been waiting patiently for power creep so that i can raid, because as a solo player i'm forced to wait a few years to be able to solo the raids you have taken for granted up until the point they become solo-able.


4) The fact that "raids are done in guilds by a select few" (which is mostly false, but let's overlook that) is perpetuated by an ever increasing level cap, not the other way around. The longer the cap stays at one place the more people raid.
the longer the cap stays in place the more people leech completions off of the players who actually know what they are doing. sounds healthy to me. /sarcasm


5) A level cap increase would indeed "impact the game as a whole negatively" because it is something that, as is evident in literally every thread about the topic, the majority of the community (from the sample of its forum users) does neither want or need (as opposed to a minority which want but do not need the increase due to a selfish and spoiled "I want more Warhammer miniatures even though I have 1000 unpainted ones at home!!" attitude - this doesn't include the tiny fraction of players who have indeed completed everything).
the majority of the community can speak for itself. you can too. :) calling people you disagree with selfish and spoiled is both selfish and spoiled.


6) Comparing the state of the game now to the state of the game when the cap was 20 or 25 and saying one is better than the other is logically false: if such a comparison was to be made you'd have to compare the current state of the game with the state it could have been in had the cap not been increased and development had been focused elsewhere for the years that followed (which is impossible to know and thus the comparison is pointless).
yeah, this one. single. point. might actually make sense. not sure how you snuck it in there.


7) Just because this game is not currently alt-friendly doesn't mean that it can't or shouldn't be.
it's pretty alt friendly. they give us a hefty number of character slots. pretty sure they aren't all supposed to be mules... unless the level cap stays exactly where it is for the next however many years... then we will need every character slot they can provide. just to hold onto the massively inflated amount of level 29 gear.


8) If the few people who have completed everything there is to do on 1 character in this game would just roll an alt (with incentives from the devs if need be, but it shouldn't) then there would be precisely zero people left in need of a level cap increase.
nobody needs a level cap increase. some of us with foresight just desire it.


People have forgotten what it's like to play games for the sake of playing games.

Sigh.

Hopefully this makes things abundantly clear.
it certainly does. shaming anyone who thinks differently than you with names like selfish and spoiled? that's why i'm a solo player, and that's why i'm counting on a level increase. so i can finally solo the raids you've been enjoying without me.

[Firebreed]

i didn't want to have to do this because this is obviously a troll post... but...


the vast majority of people can speak for themselves. you can too :)


this game doesn't cater only to the people who still have progression left on their characters. and it doesn't cater only to the people who have finished with all progression on all of their characters. it caters to everyone. calling people you disagree with selfish and illogical is both selfish and illogical.


nothing destroys a raiding scene more thoroughly than a group of players who share this exact mentality. raid or don't. it's up to you. but don't come here telling me and everyone else that you can't raid just because the level cap increased. please... i've been waiting patiently for power creep so that i can raid, because as a solo player i'm forced to wait a few years to be able to solo the raids you have taken for granted up until the point they become solo-able.


the longer the cap stays in place the more people leech completions off of the players who actually know what they are doing. sounds healthy to me. /sarcasm


the majority of the community can speak for itself. you can too. :) calling people you disagree with selfish and spoiled is both selfish and spoiled.


yeah, this one. single. point. might actually make sense. not sure how you snuck it in there.


it's pretty alt friendly. they give us a hefty number of character slots. pretty sure they aren't all supposed to be mules... unless the level cap stays exactly where it is for the next however many years... then we will need every character slot they can provide. just to hold onto the massively inflated amount of level 29 gear.


nobody needs a level cap increase. some of us with foresight just desire it.


it certainly does. shaming anyone who thinks differently than you with names like selfish and spoiled? that's why i'm a solo player, and that's why i'm counting on a level increase. so i can finally solo the raids you've been enjoying without me.

Let's go!

1) Calling a post a troll post just because you can't bring yourself to agree with the stated facts is insecure and illogical.

2) The fact that people can speak for themselves does in no way shape or form mean that one should not acknowledge their collective request/stance. How about we abolish government and we can all govern ourselves too.

3) While this game caters to everyone, the majority of the playerbase who have not maxed out their characters cannot have a vote that hold the same (or less) power than the minority who have maxed out their toons. This isn't about who this game is about, it's about maximizing playerbase happiness.

4) Calling selfish and illogical people/posts/ideas/propositions selfish and illogical is neither selfish or illogical. Being against criticism on the other hand...

5) I never said that everyone cant raid because of the cap increase; I said that more people will raid if the cap is not increased.

6) If you think that a raised level cap will allow you to solo THTH, well, I have bad news for you.

7) Your "mentality" of people leeching off compeltions off of players who "know what theyre doing" is the mentality that actually destroys the raid scene.

8) The fact that people can speak for themselves does in no way shape or form mean that one should not acknowledge their collective request/stance. How about we abolish government and we can all govern ourselves too.

9) All my original points actually make sense, because they are, well, facts.

10) Calling DDO, a game based on PLs and Reaper Progression, alt friendly, is beyond hilarious.

11) People who have no progression left on their characters can make a point of needing a cap increase (although as i said the counterpoint is "just roll an alt"). The ones of you that desire the cap increase, do so at the expense of the majority and with illogical arguments.

12) If you think calling out stuff as what it is was "shaming", then you might wanna brace yourself for reality, where people fight for what they believe to be right and true.

13) If you think that a raised level cap will allow you to solo THTH, well, I have bad news for you.

I'm not gonna do this again for every person that comes at me with nonsensical fallacies.

My original points stand.

[ggmarquez]

My original points stand.

it does not. i've solo'd every raid in the game up until sharn raids. i use multiple accounts. power creep allows this. when the level cap increases i absolutely 100% guarantee you i will multi-box solo thth. just because you can't do something doesn't mean it can't be done. if you keep trying to shame me with "selfish" and "illogical" i'm just going to go back to playing ddo. i'm logged in on 5 accounts right now. i certainly don't respect the opinions of anyone who won't respect mine. anyone who reads through this thread : pay attention please. some people who can't make an actual argument will resort to cheap tricks and subversive tactics and call it "logical" when, in fact, it is the opposite.

just because you say something is a "nonsensical fallacy" doesn't actually make it one. that's not how logic works. also, "calling stuff what it is" when in fact it is disrespectful, doesn't let you get away with it. try walking into harlem and calling people you see there "what they are" and see what happens. :) also, i have over 40 alts. i will keep working to progress them, as this game is very alt friendly. i would absolutely love account based progression systems and more alt support. but i would also absolutely love a level cap increase. also, more people will raid when the raids that are released are fun and interesting and reward an array of meaningful gear choices. nothing you or i say about level cap will ever change that. also, maximizing player happiness sounds like an idealist utopia. i'm not against socialism per-se but i don't think DDO is either a democracy or a socialist movement. the developement of DDO is left entirely to the discretion of the developers, and no amount of back-and-forth here will ever change that fact.

[Firebreed]

anyone who reads through this thread : pay attention please. some people who can't make an actual argument will resort to cheap tricks and subversive tactics

That's all I ask for as well, so I guess we can let people decide for themselves.

[Zakharov]

yep. and we could all still be clinging to a level cap of 10. how wonderful it would feel, everyone would hit cap in a few short hours and be ready to raid... but tempest spine and von5 are pretty played out at this point. sure, you could try to cram 10 years worth of content into a level 10 cap. does that sound great or what? hey guys... wanna run legendary shroud instead of heroic tempest spine? they're the same level after all...

No one suggested anything like that - I said keep it at 30. Though I would have kept 20 the cap for much longer, at least 30 is a logical end point for epic levels.



you can put advancement systems where-ever you like. add heroic sentient weapons... add heroic destiny spheres... whatev's. as long as characters can continue to advance and grow in level as well...

Yes that's exactly what I'm saying! You can put advancement wherever you like, there's no need to for it to be tied to increasing the character level cap at all.



i'm tired of only having 30 steps to climb.

But you don't.. with all past lives available you have thousands of steps to climb right now! And they could add literally ten thousand more steps for you to climb without ever raising the lvl cap.


adding 2 more won't be as big a burden as some would have you believe.

We have no idea how they are planning to implement a lvl cap increase or at what rate. It may be only 2, but it could be 5 or even 10, who knows? I do know that when Underdark released, it divided players so much that most of the friends and guildies I knew quit playing within a few months. It took a long time to re-establish an end game after that, and only after the cap stayed 30 for a couple years.


i want to climb those 2 extra steps and see what awaits me there.

You could climb a million new extra steps without any need to raise the lvl cap.


even if it's just a couple new raids and a quest arc initially.

That is a worst case scenario and basically what happened with Underdark - new lvl cap, new raid, 3 new quest arcs. The content was great, but only 1 raid means no raid scene means people who primarily enjoy raiding quit playing, means less people to group with both at cap and otherwise.


because every initially turns into an eventually. and that eventually sounds really good to me. if you have a hard time finding groups, it is certainly possible adding a whole 2 more levels will make it harder for you.

I'm not worried about finding groups in the way you frame it, I'm worried about not filling groups because of people quitting the game or being further divided across an increasing spread of levels.


but, it sounds to me like the problem is cap players vs tr players. realistically, if the cap goes up, cap players just hang out at 32 instead of 30. its not like you've convinced those players to stop raiding/highskulls and start throwing up lfm's for whatever lvl range your own character is at the moment. no, i think its far more likely cap players will stay cap players even if the level cap increases. so the problem is really how to fill groups when a portion of the population would rather stay at cap. and that's a different question all-together.

See this problem affects both ends - increasing the lvl cap alienates people who prefer to remain at cap but lvl slowly, and potentially makes it harder for people to find groups while TRing as they are spread out across more levels. Can you imagine trying to find people to group with if the lvl cap went up 20 or 30 levels in a few years?


My main concern is facilitating grouping at all levels. Like I said before, if we had some auto scaling system this would be less of a concern - anyone could group with anyone and lvl wouldn't really matter. But so long as grouping is tied to character level, raising the lvl cap will harm the multiplayer aspect of this MMO.

[ggmarquez]

We have no idea how they are planning to implement a lvl cap increase or at what rate. It may be only 2, but it could be 5 or even 10, who knows?

actually they have already stated the level cap will increase to 40, in small increments, probably 2 levels at a time.

[ggmarquez]

No one suggested anything like that - I said keep it at 30. Though I would have kept 20 the cap for much longer, at least 30 is a logical end point for epic levels.

it might seem like i'm trying to be a jerk... i'm really not. but hear me out. what you just said is basically, if we start right now, we can keep the level cap at 30 for the next 10 years. which (try to imagine it, please do try) is literally exactly the same thing as if the level cap had been 10 for the past 10 years. like, it's just changing what # level you cram 10 years worth of content into.

[Firebreed]

having the cap at level 10 for 10 years is literally exactly the same thing as having the cap be level 30 for 10 years

do you even read what you type my man

[Mglaxix]

it's like you have to back down now, so protection is exactly what you will need.

I believe Friebreed said was projection not protection.

But if he wants to do a projection perhaps Firebreed and the rest should get in a wayback time machine and take a look at when level cap was increased to level 30 in https://ddowiki.com/page/Update_29_Release_Notes and ask themselves why oh why oh why would SSG increase the base level of quests to 32 if they had not already been putting in place a level cap increase. Now I can't speak for SSG but I came to the conclusion way back in 2015 that the next level cap increase was already in the works....... but hey that takes some serious deduction powers I mean after all if cap was going to stay at 30 why oh why oh why would SSG increase the base level of any quest to 32. Oh it must have been to separate the player population more, no it was for more of a challenge, nah it was because they could not properly scale the mobs in the raid without increasing the base level of the quest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85cL1HisrNc

The funny thing is SSG already has 30 base level 31 quests and 41 base level 32 quests since everyone feels like BB is to run at +2 over normal that would mean they have been running all these quests underlevel and performing just fine tons of R10 completions, raids being two manned and group completions on R10 as well. But hey there are only 13 level 30+ raids in the game oh no that's not true 3 more are coming in U47 so that makes it 15 raids at level 30+ so even if cap was raised by two levels all these raids would still be relevant for the raiding community at cap now of course those that have already acquired what they want will move on but some of them have already. The same people made the same arguments when level cap was raised to level 30, level 28, and level 25 we're not ready it will separate the player base and on and on and on yet here they are years later making the same excuses once again having no ability to project that an inevitable level cap increase was coming. I mean after all when you look at it https://ddowiki.com/page/Level_cap it is very clear that this has been the longest stretch in the history of DDO without a level cap increase. But hey I am sure all the people saying it is going to kill the game, separate the player base have all the data to back up and prove what they are saying is true otherwise it is simply their opinion and nothing more.

All SSG has to do now it roll out 2 or 3 raids per expansion and one per quest pack release on average that would be 4 or 5 raids added per year and look at that you increase the level cap and introduce new raids with new level base at 33+ and everyone has a chance to run the older raids in pugs because of better gear being made available thus for all of those myself included who have not bothered to run any number of current cap raids can do so with PUG groups and be gaining some gear they haven't managed to get yet or haven't felt like they could run for whatever reason

SSG can hopefully take the opportunity to tweak epic destinies, epic feats, enhancement trees, classes, and whatever else is in their roadmap to the future expansion and improvement of DDO not stagnating way back in 2015.

History repeats itself read the history of DDO level cap increases

At launch (February 2006) it was 10.
With Module 3: Demon Sands (October 2006) it was increased to 12.
With Module 4: Reaver's Bane (April 2007) it was increased to 14.
With Module 6: The Thirteenth Eclipse (January 2008) it was increased to 16.
With Eberron Unlimited (September 2009) it was increased to 20.
With Menace of the Underdark (June 2012) it was increased to epic level 25.
With Shadowfell Conspiracy (August 2013) it was increased to 28.
With The Codex War (December 2015) it was increased to 30.
With announced Feywild expansion (late 2020), it will increase above 30. It should increase slowly over several updates until 40.

And you can do a forum search and read all the history of doom and gloom as several of these level cap increases were introduced and yet here we are despite all their projections of all of those people who got it wrong in the past. Some left, some stayed, and some joined that's about all you can say about level cap increases. It clearly did not lead to the death of DDO. History will simply repeat itself once again.

[Firebreed]

snip

History doesn't have to repeat itself though. (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/518159-This-is-an-alt-friendly-game-what-the-problem?p=6361164&viewfull=1#post6361164) It's in our (read: devs) hands.

[Mglaxix]

See this problem affects both ends - increasing the lvl cap alienates people who prefer to remain at cap but lvl slowly, and potentially makes it harder for people to find groups while TRing as they are spread out across more levels. Can you imagine trying to find people to group with if the lvl cap went up 20 or 30 levels in a few years?

My main concern is facilitating grouping at all levels. Like I said before, if we had some auto scaling system this would be less of a concern - anyone could group with anyone and lvl wouldn't really matter. But so long as grouping is tied to character level, raising the lvl cap will harm the multiplayer aspect of this MMO.

A group is two or more people not 6 or 12.

Please list all the heroic quests that cannot be two manned let alone run solo

Tomb of the Burning Heart - solo-able - two man at most = flesh to stone cookies, scrolls, pets, probably a few other ways to do it

Xorian Cipher - solo-able - two man at most - see above

Vault of Night - two man - four at most - hey it's a raid

Twilight Forge - two man

Titan Awakes - two man

Not much else I can see before anyone can cap level 20 but hey maybe I missed something please go ahead

So you want to allow players to cap 30 farm high end reaper xp then step back and help their friends farm up heroic rxp. You'd be better off doing what I have done and parking an rxp toon at level 4 with 36 points, a level 6 with 36 points, a level 9 with 39 points, a level 13 with 39 points, and a level 15 with 42 points all possible with one run to 30 and a TR and not even that on some of them. Instead of wasting your time de-leveling, re-leveling, respecing, re-gearing your main. If they need help beyond what a level 15 character can do they need more than your help. But hey that would never work with as hard as it is to get rxp. SSG made it even easier to do with this with the free quest coupon for extra accounts and as a result you can facilitate grouping at all levels you deem appropriate that is what alts are for in some cases.




History doesn't have to repeat itself though. (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/518159-This-is-an-alt-friendly-game-what-the-problem?p=6361164&viewfull=1#post6361164) It's in our (read: devs) hands.

You should at least link a relevant thread to level cap increase where a dev has made a public statement, it's not like I am the one saying a level cap increase is coming that is a statement from SSG and unlike others here I prepared for it and expected it long ago. For those that did not I say again history repeats itself over and over again...... you had five plus years to do something if you haven't well the sky is falling and the end is near.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/518145-Level-Cap-Increase-Postponed?p=6361149#post6361149

[Firebreed]

You should at least link a relevant thread to level cap increase where a dev has made a public statement, it's not like I am the one saying a level cap increase is coming that is a statement from SSG and unlike others here I prepared for it and expected it long ago. For those that did not I say again history repeats itself over and over again...... you had five plus years to do something if you haven't well the sky is falling and the end is near.

Sure, here's a relevant thread. (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/431908-Holiday-Producer-s-Letter?p=5186628&viewfull=1#post5186628)

[Mglaxix]

Sure, here's a relevant thread. (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/431908-Holiday-Producer-s-Letter?p=5186628&viewfull=1#post5186628)

Funny thing is join date is 07-01-2013 last post was 02-19-2014 and avatar is a turbine symbol yep that looks relevant to a company that no longer owns the product and has no input into it's development at all.

I don't see anything relevant to SSG in that thread at all that was when DDO was under the control of Turbine maybe you should take your problems to them I'm sure they can sort it out for you. I am pretty sure statement made by previous ownership has no bearing on any companies policies or bottom line.



Our final update of 2014 will extend the level cap to 30, which is intended to be DDO’s “permanent” level cap and complete the Epic levels. With this update we’ll be looking at ways to complete and improve existing systems like Epic Destinies.


This line only states that the permanent Epic level cap will be thirty as I understand it we are now going to be moving into Legendary levels so this seems like a pretty weak argument to say the least since Epic levels are not being increased and you can remain at level 30 as long as you like.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=6361183

This is a little more relevant but some of the naming should be updated but it basically says that SSG can change the game at anytime, for any reason or for no reason at all, but hey they just own it, better call Turbine and let them know how you feel about a new ownership group taking charge of their own destiny and their future.



If you glass is half full get a smaller glass so it will be full.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPr3yvkHYsE

[Grimtooth333]

Thank the Great Maker for no level cap increase... I hope the devs forget increasing the cap and figure something else out instead.

Just my 2 CP.

[Bjond]

Thank the Great Maker for no level cap increase

My worry there isn't power creep or increased grind, it's subdividing an already tiny grouping pool into ever smaller fractions. Increasing FTB grouping range in epics at the same time as level cap would solve that along with keeping the total L20->cap XP the same.

Level gated epic destinies is the horror which could still be happening. EDs are currently almost entirely front-loaded. Bit of grind to unlock and then you have full access. That means you actually get to play your build for almost your entire time in epics -- pretty much from 2nd or 3rd epic life onward. THIS is what makes epics fun.

You actually get to play your character for the majority of epic levels -- unlike heroics where you grind up on a generic junk character for 90% of the game and only get to play your character for the final 10% before TR.

So, while I like hearing the "no level cap" increase, I'd still punt DDO to the curb if they change EDs to a back-loaded level-gated system as is used in heroics.

BTW, for end-game focus, there is actually a TON of space in game for new items without any power-creep at all. They've already noticed this and have started adding new L21 items. L21 items have huge utility in game and could easily be expanded. Characters don't need to grow stronger when you can add a few similar-power options and relieve the immense tetris-frustrations with current gear.

[Gniewomir]

Maybe before you act like I am asking for power creep, level cap increase, and those things that you are against you should read the bold statement in my response to you. I am merely pointing out that and expansion by definition would mean expanding the game in some form or fashion not asking us to merely cough up $$$ for something that does not expand the game in some way. An expansion should include something that expands the game not merely add a few trinkets and baubles. Cosmetics, gold seal hires, some pots thrown in for good measure, a wilderness, a few raids and a group of quests. That is a quest pack not an expansion.

Menace of the Underdark - raised cap to 25, added epic destinies

Shadowfell - raised cap to 28, added iconic races

Ravenloft - added sentient jewel system

Sharn - Added minor artifact system


Firstly ou contradict yourself. You just said in previous post that quests, race, iconic and stuff like that is not enough for you while now you claim they're clearly expanding game content. Would be nice if you could read what expansions really are, cause the fact that you consider something quest pack and not expansion does not mean you're right. In fact there's no border between those two and it's just matter of your own nomenclature. Expansion is whatever devs will call that, because they're to decide what is expansion and what isn't. There're games with expansions that do not bring new levels, classes, anything, just quests/plot/storyline. There's no strict definition of what expansion is based on amount and variety of content update brings, especially since there're people who consider feywild worth more without new lvl cap than with it. So please, do not try to present your own point of view like some kind of universal truth.

Secondly while you were posting it you had no clue what will be included in feywild, but information that it'll be not cap increase was enough for you to judge it's not worth specific amounut of money. Raising level cap is always power creep - character is more powerful, items are more powerful, you get additional perks, content below is significantly easier. The conclusion is pretty simple: you do not care and do not know what will be included in expansion, but since it's won't be more levels and power creep brough by them - it's not worth buying for you.


These expansions all expanded the game from what I see coming in Feywild at this point it will not be delivering any expansion to the game in any form. I don't personally care which way SSG expands the game but if SSG expects people to pay for an expansion they should expand the game in some way not try to sell quest pack that is simply larger than average at the price of an expansion. Clearly SSG can expand the game horizontally vs vertically it doesn't matter much to me either way. I'd pay $130 for a full on QOL expansion that covered from level 1 to 30 and cleared up classes, enhancements, crafting, gear, quests, and any number of other things to make it financially worth while for SSG to do so. Let's not get carried away and expect ladders or anything to crazy to get fixed.

How exactly iconics or minor artifacts expanded game? Iconics are basically normal races with auto-used xp stone from otto box. Minor artifacts are basicaly sentient weapons in different item slot. Both of them do not provide any new mechanics, both of them do not change gameplay, both of them don't bring anything new. You can wrap apple in yellow paper and call it banana, but it's neither going to change whats inside or how it taste. Don't let cheap marketing fool you. I could understand if you were talking only about quantity (10 quests +1 race =not expansion; 10 quests + 4 races = expansion), but if we speak about quality - it's not like any expansion other than motu brought some major quality and mechanic changes (tho i agree sentient weapon are something new, minor, but still - new in ddo). For example if feywild will bring only new quests and race+iconic it'll be already same amount of "new" content as sharn, cause like i said: artifacts can't be considered as new mechanic and probably there'll be few artifacts in feywild too.


And don't kid yourself that grouping will fracture more simply by raising level cap after all over 95% of the content if not more can be completed by two people which is a group. Even cap raids are being completed on reaper now by two people. The fact that some people can and some people can't does not really matter. Lowering the difficulty to complete is not a game breaker it's not like BB matters anymore.

I assume you never really heard about math. Let me give you quick lesson.
90 players and 30 levels - average 3 players you could play with on every character level.
90 players and 40 levels - average 2.25 players you could play with on every character level.
The ability to solo/duo/whatever might matter for you if you never heard about math, but everyone else cant deny simple fact that statistically speaking the more levels we have, the less players per each level there is, because different players are on different stages of leveling their characters. I won't even mention the fact that more levels might bring more grouping restrictions, cause running lvl 20 epic bob with max xp and streak at level 40 would be pretty stupid.


I almost never fail to fill an LFM at any level at anytime on my home server and no I don't use private channels to fill them I post and go. The reason people can't fill LFM's are many and varied but when I see party decides difficultly that just means whoever it is doesn't feel comfortable enough to say Normal, Hard, Elite, or Reaper + skulls and go meaning they don't get my attention at all. I post R4 and will only be upping the skulls based on party performance. I post LFM's that show every quest at that level I will be running in the order I will be running them thus people know and understand that I have a plan and feel comfortable enough to know I can run the content and don't need them to start that is because a group is two and I don't need anymore than that to compete and complete.

Yawn. So there are still people who believe writing r572398 and all quests you're going to run in lfm description will magically solve all grouping problems. If you want i can do screenshots when im alone at my character level. If you want i can do screenshots when at some levels there's literally no players. If you want i can record clips when i'm keeping perfect lfms up for hours and noone joins. If you want i can post less popular raids and show you how i'm waiting 12hrs and still cant fill it. If you play at peak hours - good for you. If you don't care if you're running alone/duo - good for you. If you find fun in running alone - good for you. Cause i don't. I do not play multiplayer game for single player experience. And trust me, im here since 2010, i know how to create lfm.


Clearly the grouping would benefit from reducing the number of servers having been on hardcore and seeing the sheer number of people on that server but until that happens if it ever does it's just a pipe dream. After all there are a lot of issues that would have to be resolved first before anything like that would take off. People are attached to their high level guild, character names, huge piles of trash in their tr cache to name a few. You gonna give all those things up if your server is merged... if not why are you expecting anyone else to its all over the forums people wanting names and not wanting to give up names, guilds, tr cache. Me personally I don't get attached to things, I tr consistently with less than 80 items and could reduce this by at least 30 stacks of yugo pots at any time. Put up a new server let anyone transfer for free and I am all in. That does not mean I will abandon my home server completely until such as time as I felt like the new server was populated to a decent level.

Agreed, there's no need for so many servers in ddo and probably i would be a bit less against raising lvl cap if all servers would be merged (tho i still would be against, cause im 100% sure sooner or later new reincarnations will follow new levels). But the problem is that merge is like thanos, inevitable. Sooner, later. In year, in 10 years. Doesn't matter, merge will happen. It's normal stage for every mmo game, ddo won't last for ever. The only question is: when? And there're only two options: either merge will be made soon enough to revitalise game, bring those who left, keep those who were planning to leave, or it'll be done too late: merged server will be semi ghost town anyway and noone (from those who left) will bother with returning. But still - sooner or later ssg will be forced to figure out all the problems, name collision, guilds, items and i prefer if they do it soon enough to keep me here.

[kanordog]

A loud minority on the forums does not speak for the entire game's population.

Wow

Where was your reasoning when they introduced one shotting champions and the reward based reaper (instead of bragging based reaper)?


There should be one occasion when the devs listen to those who did not maxed their character, you know, like ~99% of players.

ps.: I will log in after level increase just to see the twenty of you want level increase spread on eight servers trying to group for one of the two level 38 quests...

[Gniewomir]

Wow

Where was your reasoning when they introduced *snip* the reward based reaper (instead of bragging based reaper)?


Actually, it's kind sad. You know, the fact that there're players who do expect endless loop of farming something, cause if they won't have anything to do in game, suddenly they'll find themselves in situation when they have nothing to do at all, not only in game.

[Mglaxix]

Firstly ou contradict yourself. You just said in previous post that quests, race, iconic and stuff like that is not enough for you while now you claim they're clearly expanding game content. Would be nice if you could read what expansions really are, cause the fact that you consider something quest pack and not expansion does not mean you're right. In fact there's no border between those two and it's just matter of your own nomenclature. Expansion is whatever devs will call that, because they're to decide what is expansion and what isn't. There're games with expansions that do not bring new levels, classes, anything, just quests/plot/storyline. There's no strict definition of what expansion is based on amount and variety of content update brings, especially since there're people who consider feywild worth more without new lvl cap than with it. So please, do not try to present your own point of view like some kind of universal truth.

Secondly while you were posting it you had no clue what will be included in feywild, but information that it'll be not cap increase was enough for you to judge it's not worth specific amounut of money. Raising level cap is always power creep - character is more powerful, items are more powerful, you get additional perks, content below is significantly easier. The conclusion is pretty simple: you do not care and do not know what will be included in expansion, but since it's won't be more levels and power creep brough by them - it's not worth buying for you.

How exactly iconics or minor artifacts expanded game? Iconics are basically normal races with auto-used xp stone from otto box. Minor artifacts are basicaly sentient weapons in different item slot. Both of them do not provide any new mechanics, both of them do not change gameplay, both of them don't bring anything new. You can wrap apple in yellow paper and call it banana, but it's neither going to change whats inside or how it taste. Don't let cheap marketing fool you. I could understand if you were talking only about quantity (10 quests +1 race =not expansion; 10 quests + 4 races = expansion), but if we speak about quality - it's not like any expansion other than motu brought some major quality and mechanic changes (tho i agree sentient weapon are something new, minor, but still - new in ddo). For example if feywild will bring only new quests and race+iconic it'll be already same amount of "new" content as sharn, cause like i said: artifacts can't be considered as new mechanic and probably there'll be few artifacts in feywild too.

A quest pack with no expansion is just that a quest pack an expansion adds something new to the game previously not available. So Shadowfell was indeed an expansion since the work had to be put in to create the iconic race system that was previously only setup to allow players to create a max level character to level 7 and have no real customized past life bonuses including heroic and iconic past lives in one this was just a couple of lines of code right.

Ravenloft introduced the sentient jewel system once again work had to be put into the game nothing new here is there all just few lines of code again.

Sharn introduced Minor artifacts while and extension of the sentient jewel system can certainly be viewed and an expansion of the possibilities of what can now be developed using this type of system. ie perhaps the upcoming augment revamp

Sharn was certainly less of an expansion than Ravenloft that must be why I did not purchase the top tier bundle. Lot of fluff with not much to offer Feywild is looking the same to me at this point.

I could care less personally about a level cap increase I merely accept it for what it is. I stated pretty clearly that the delay means nothing to me. I have plenty of things I am working towards that take precedence over a level cap increase. There are probably hundreds of posts since MoTU raised cap and every cap increase since and every time chicken little comes out on the forums and announces the end is near oh my oh my oh my the sky is falling and yet here we are still playing. This is just another one of those threads.

Like I said and expansion should in my eyes include something that expands the game the augment revamp which was posted 19 hours after my post hardly makes any mention of the augment revamp and what it will include I'm happy to see it get done is it an expansion that remains to be seen that alone is not worth $130 to me still. Level cap increase would have indeed been an expansion. Iconic and race those systems are already pretty much plug and play systems now that does not look like an expansion to me maybe to you but my opinion differs from yours on that and I will continue to define an expansion by that type of game expanding content it contains not trinkets and baubles.



I assume you never really heard about math. Let me give you quick lesson.
90 players and 30 levels - average 3 players you could play with on every character level.
90 players and 40 levels - average 2.25 players you could play with on every character level.
The ability to solo/duo/whatever might matter for you if you never heard about math, but everyone else cant deny simple fact that statistically speaking the more levels we have, the less players per each level there is, because different players are on different stages of leveling their characters. I won't even mention the fact that more levels might bring more grouping restrictions, cause running lvl 20 epic bob with max xp and streak at level 40 would be pretty stupid.

I assume nothing, Jut like you know nothing about facts and the fact is you have nothing at all to back up your claims what so ever. If you did you would have posted them.

This is as close to fact as any non SSG employee can get to the current population of any server and wow it sure doesn't look like 90 players to me.

https://www.playeraudit.com/servers

Looks to me like most servers the population average for the quarter is over 200 players. Now of course those numbers are not as correct as SSG could provide but it does indeed give some insight into the population by server and your want to cut that number in more than half by your math that sounds a bit off to me. But hey it seems like you must have some facts to back up that 90 number you tossed out there so go ahead and show me the facts on how you came up with it otherwise it is just your some number you dreamed up.

Even with your bad info with 40 levels you still come up with 2.25 players a group is two players. No matter how many levels are introduced there will always be a limited number of players that is why some of us have invested in our alts at different levels to be able to quickly and efficiently log and help someone out while maintaining our main but hey what are alts for.

Over 95% of content can be two manned thanks to the forums and caving in to people most cap raids can be two manned now.

I already see grouping restrictions coming it's not like SSG is gonna let you continue to run reaper or bb with no level limits that has been taken advantage of for years now I knew this the moment I read the producers letter announcing the level cap increase way back in January 2020 that was 9 months ago and I had no doubt changes to epic rxp and bb were coming. You must have seen the level cap increase coming if not well... I am glad for the delay it simply gives me more to go ahead and continue on as is but unlike some I knew it was coming and was ready for it long before it went public..



Yawn. So there are still people who believe writing r572398 and all quests you're going to run in lfm description will magically solve all grouping problems. If you want i can do screenshots when im alone at my character level. If you want i can do screenshots when at some levels there's literally no players. If you want i can record clips when i'm keeping perfect lfms up for hours and noone joins. If you want i can post less popular raids and show you how i'm waiting 12hrs and still cant fill it. If you play at peak hours - good for you. If you don't care if you're running alone/duo - good for you. If you find fun in running alone - good for you. Cause i don't. I do not play multiplayer game for single player experience. And trust me, im here since 2010, i know how to create lfm.

It works for me over 90% of the time I see people in this thread already saying level cap increase will fracture the grouping those people must be having trouble doing something to attract players to their lfm's it's a pretty simple if you ask me. Raiding is a whole another ballgame there are channels for that and if your not using them that's on you. Less popular raids lol with all the oh no your gonna kill the raid scene how can any raid be unpopular there are a whopping 13 of them talk about boring hey let's go run that raid again for the 100th time this life it might be different. Yeah maybe if your running it on reaper and pushing the skulls but LN, LH no thanks. If your are sitting on the same lfm for 12 hours maybe it isn't your lfm at all why people are not clicking on it there is after all one common denominator that is not changing maybe that's why your sitting for 12 hours waiting. But hey I never heard of math right.

I don't care how I run solo, duo, grouped but I won't and don't need anyone to get rolling in anything other than a raid. Post and go if they join fine if not I roll on and jam to my tunes. I did not log in to sit on an lfm for 12 hours. I play when I play I doubt anyone can play exclusively during peak hours.



Agreed, there's no need for so many servers in ddo and probably i would be a bit less against raising lvl cap if all servers would be merged (tho i still would be against, cause im 100% sure sooner or later new reincarnations will follow new levels). But the problem is that merge is like thanos, inevitable. Sooner, later. In year, in 10 years. Doesn't matter, merge will happen. It's normal stage for every mmo game, ddo won't last for ever. The only question is: when? And there're only two options: either merge will be made soon enough to revitalise game, bring those who left, keep those who were planning to leave, or it'll be done too late: merged server will be semi ghost town anyway and noone (from those who left) will bother with returning. But still - sooner or later ssg will be forced to figure out all the problems, name collision, guilds, items and i prefer if they do it soon enough to keep me here.


That is true of all things regardless of a game, a garden, a job, or life in general everything dies. Nothing any of us can do about server merges except wait and see and hope for the best in the mean time I'll keep chugging along just like it is and adapting to whatever SSG and life throws at me.

[ggmarquez]

some people in this thread (and elsewhere) have advocated strongly for horizontal progression. something about paragon levels (or incremental advancement) where small bonus's can be earned gradually... over a long time. this instead of level cap increase. let me just point out, it would push alt play even further behind. raising the level cap has yet to actually kill off alts. but new sideways progression systems, similar to reaper trees, would be yet another nail in the coffin for the alt game.

when they raised the cap to 30, i leveled my alts to 30. before that i leveled them 28, and 25 still earlier. i never felt like my alts were too far behind until.... reaper trees and sideways progression. as soon as we got a taste of incremental advancement on a per character basis (reaper points) i saw my alts start to slip further and further from where i felt they should be. prior to reaper, the worst i had to face was a jaunt to cap, and then the crawl to acquire the gear they would need. usually in the form of raiding regularly.

now, it's more of a slow crawl to no finish-line and the only measuring stick is my main, who has 60 or 70 more reaper points than any of my alts.
if you really think paragon levels are the right way to provide advancement instead of a level cap increase, please consider... what exactly do you anticipate will happen to alt play? do you for-see account based paragon progression? i don't.

i firmly anticipate a cap-increase will provide less of an obstacle going forward, than any new "horizontal" systems. and will not relegate alt play to the very back of the bus, even as it keeps being asked to get up and slide one row back, every year or so.

[Yamani]

some people in this thread (and elsewhere) have advocated strongly for horizontal progression. something about paragon levels (or incremental advancement) where small bonus's can be earned gradually... over a long time. this instead of level cap increase. let me just point out, it would push alt play even further behind. raising the level cap has yet to actually kill off alts. but new sideways progression systems, similar to reaper trees, would be yet another nail in the coffin for the alt game.

when they raised the cap to 30, i leveled my alts to 30. before that i leveled them 28, and 25 still earlier. i never felt like my alts were too far behind until.... reaper trees and sideways progression. as soon as we got a taste of incremental advancement on a per character basis (reaper points) i saw my alts start to slip further and further from where i felt they should be. prior to reaper, the worst i had to face was a jaunt to cap, and then the crawl to acquire the gear they would need. usually in the form of raiding regularly.

now, it's more of a slow crawl to no finish-line and the only measuring stick is my main, who has 60 or 70 more reaper points than any of my alts.
if you really think paragon levels are the right way to provide advancement instead of a level cap increase, please consider... what exactly do you anticipate will happen to alt play? do you for-see account based paragon progression? i don't.

i firmly anticipate a cap-increase will provide less of an obstacle going forward, than any new "horizontal" systems. and will not relegate alt play to the very back of the bus, even as it keeps being asked to get up and slide one row back, every year or so.

The paragon system is a stolen idea from another game, diablo iirc or swtor, and it was account based so shared throughout all your characters

[Draxis]

The problem with the above excerpts is that you both take for granted that a Feywild expansion that doesn't contain a level cap increase will unavoidably make current equipped items obsolete, which, as I've explained in my first (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/518114-No-level-cap-increase-for-Feywild-as-per-Cordovan-s-weekly-stream?p=6360630&viewfull=1#post6360630) and main posts (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/518114-No-level-cap-increase-for-Feywild-as-per-Cordovan-s-weekly-stream?p=6360823&viewfull=1#post6360823) does not have to be (and shouldn't, if the devs don't lack foresight) the case.


If the Feywild loot isn't worth replacing Sharn loot then I have greatly reduced interest in purchasing the expansion, which is exactly what SSG wants to avoid. So of course it's going to invalidate most or possibly all of the Sharn loot. Just look at past expansions as evidence.

[Zeleron]

You're hopeless. Here are some facts:

1) The vast majority of people still have tons of progression left on their characters.

2) Having progression left on your character makes it selfish and illogical to ask for more progression before you have completed what's already in place.

3) Besides destroying the raiding scene (which exists whether you like it or not), raising the level cap does the following:
- 3a) Causes people's current end-game item builds to become obsolete and increases gear tetris, which is hated by many (by not raising the cap there are ways to avoid this, whereas raising it guarantees it)
- 3b) Adds substantially more power (-creep) to the game (raising the level cap VS adding a system that supports alts/creating items that fill holes or enable builds/adding sideways progression at cap that offers small rewards)
- 3c) Extends the experience required to reach the level cap (longer for the casual player to reach endgame)

4) The fact that "raids are done in guilds by a select few" (which is mostly false, but let's overlook that) is perpetuated by an ever increasing level cap, not the other way around. The longer the cap stays at one place the more people raid.

5) A level cap increase would indeed "impact the game as a whole negatively" because it is something that, as is evident in literally every thread about the topic, the majority of the community (from the sample of its forum users) does neither want or need (as opposed to a minority which want but do not need the increase due to a selfish and spoiled "I want more Warhammer miniatures even though I have 1000 unpainted ones at home!!" attitude - this doesn't include the tiny fraction of players who have indeed completed everything).

6) Comparing the state of the game now to the state of the game when the cap was 20 or 25 and saying one is better than the other is logically false: if such a comparison was to be made you'd have to compare the current state of the game with the state it could have been in had the cap not been increased and development had been focused elsewhere for the years that followed (which is impossible to know and thus the comparison is pointless).

7) Just because this game is not currently alt-friendly doesn't mean that it can't or shouldn't be.

8) If the few people who have completed everything there is to do on 1 character in this game would just roll an alt (with incentives from the devs if need be, but it shouldn't) then there would be precisely zero people left in need of a level cap increase.

People have forgotten what it's like to play games for the sake of playing games.

Sigh.

Hopefully this makes things abundantly clear.

Let me correct somethings:
1: This is an opinion. Many players even consider the progression of there toon done on a first lifer.
2: It's also selfish to say something shouldn't happen cause you don't want it while others do. And as a player who tr's just to reset my first time rxp bonuses now I for sure would enjoy more stuff to do that's NOT just sitting at the same level with marginal gains.
3: Raiding scene will always be there,
3a) happens every update
3b) happens every update
3c) Yep. (Hey an actual fact! 1 + 1 = 2!)
4: Actually most higher completion raids are done via guilds/private channels, pug's tend to only do EN/EH and rarely R1. So the raids that people want to join are the ones done by guilds.
5: Opinion. I could very much just as well say a vast majority of the players that sit at end game are also bored and waiting for the next thing to do and this was just taken away from them cause a vast minority of forum users screeched about it via spamming the forums. Because it's still going to happen, just postponed due to "reasons."
6: You can not say something is "logically false" if it is a person's opinion... I can say Epic destinies hurt the game cause the system was considerably bad. Still just makes it my OPINION and not a logically false statement.
7: Again, opinion.
8: This is a key one: You are saying other's (in other posts) are selfish, but here you are telling them they should change how they want to play, because this future progress doesn't fit your view of the game. Which makes it that you are being the selfish one.

Most of your "facts" are actually just opinions.

Just going to add something though: Most of your opinions and views is also implying on how little you know what would actually happen with the level cap increase.
More power creep in gear could be just as well required to meet the new requirements of a possibly new difficulty above the current legendary content.

[rabidfox]

When they boost the level cap, I'll be looking forward to a level 31 legendary Korthos Island (surely that has to be a thing at some point); but only if for legendary Misery's Peak they revamp it & swap the sides the parties run down and we kite the dragon for once. =)

[Gizah]

I've been playing for a long time and some times there have been some wonderful expansions and some times less. I always prefer quality over quantity. The game, based on D&D, has a huge and beautiful potential. I understand that it is not easy and that you have to please new and old players and despite everything no one will ever be happy but some errors are too obvious such as U47, the new loot is almost all useless for those who play endgame. It's okay if they don't increase level and I'd like them to be more careful about other aspects of the game.

[ggmarquez]

some errors are too obvious such as U47, the new loot is almost all useless for those who play endgame

some people have been chomping at the bit to have power creep reigned in. this is what it looks like when an update achieves that goal. tame. maybe the feywild expansion can also be equally mild?

[Gizah]

some people have been chomping at the bit to have power creep reigned in. this is what it looks like when an update achieves that goal. tame. maybe the feywild expansion can also be equally mild?

As an expansion, I hope it will have a bigger impact on the game. I would be sorry if it were not so because I repeat, the game has an incredible potential.

[Faltout]

Most of your "facts" are actually just opinions.
You're right. Besides, if we only relied on facts to live, we would be doomed. Humans use their inference ability to combine current facts and history (experience) in order to predict the future and make decisions. Some do it better, some do it worse. And if all this talk has not made you see what the other side's arguments are, nothing will.

How about some facts then.

FACT: The game's population has never stopped declining over the years. You could argue about what the specific causes are but one thing is for certain: Whatever the developers are doing, it's not working. Pretending that their choice of raising the level cap must be sound because they are "the devs" is wrong because they are the only ones at fault for losing players. (See note below)

FACT: More people want no level cap raise than people wanting a cap raise. The poll that gathered 200 votes a couple of months ago and the overwhelming result opposing the level cap means that even when forum bias is applied, the result is still extremely trustworthy.

FACT: There has NEVER been a player questionaire to measure the happiness of players and what the majority of playstyles is. Without asking those questions, developers are forced to rely on statistics like "What is the most favorite class", "How many logins per day", "Most common quest difficulty" making it possible to realize a pattern but impossible to realize the reason behind the results.

FACT: What players say and what players need is often quite different as studies have shown. You may say "I want to raise the level cap" but what you may need is "I want something to do". Others may say "I don't want new gear to invalidate old gear" but what they may mean is "I don't care how much effort it takes to max my character again, I will do it". Others say "Population is low and I can't complete the quests" but they may mean "I want to play with other people and I don't care how or why that happens".

The point is: Given the failure of the leaders (the developers) in the past, a majority vote seems like the next option to consider. The perfect solution would be for the devs to actually hire an analyst to figure out what the players need, but I fear that may never happen.

Note: You may say "It's not the developers' fault that the playerbase is declining. It's the age of the game.". To that I have to ask: Has the population of people playing chess declined? Has the population of people playing dungeons and dragons declined? No. A game will remain relevant as long as what it offers is timeless. If an idle game offers a counter that reaches from 1 to 1000 in various ways, the counter is going to reach 1000 at some point. Getting an awesome piece of gear after 10000 runs of The Grotto is not timeless. Raising the level cap every time a X number of players reach it is not timeless. Letting different people play together is timeless. And this is why for a company that makes a MMORPG, players playing together should be more important to please than people playing solo like some people in this thread seem to be. (What kind of reason is "I want the level raised so I can finally solo the raids" anyway? OMG) But only when there is a choice to be made to please one or the other. Often there is a choice to please both.

[Mglaxix]

You're right. Besides, if we only relied on facts to live, we would be doomed. Humans use their inference ability to combine current facts and history (experience) in order to predict the future and make decisions. Some do it better, some do it worse. And if all this talk has not made you see what the other side's arguments are, nothing will.

How about some facts then.

A Fact is something that's indisputable, based on empirical research and quantifiable measures. Facts go beyond theories. They're proven through calculation and experience, or they're something that definitively occurred in the past.

Truth is entirely different; it may include fact, but it can also include belief. Perhaps what you should say is the truth is you haven't provided a single fact in your post it is clearly more close to your opinion.

Opinion is a belief or judgment that rests on grounds insufficient to produce complete certainty and therefore not a Fact



FACT: The game's population has never stopped declining over the years. You could argue about what the specific causes are but one thing is for certain: Whatever the developers are doing, it's not working. Pretending that their choice of raising the level cap must be sound because they are "the devs" is wrong because they are the only ones at fault for losing players. (See note below)

If you want to post your facts post then post the facts. Don't just post your opinion show us all the highest the DDO population has ever been or what it is now... you can't period. If you could you would have.

Fact: the who list that is tracked doubled since the worldwide pandemic and that clearly is because the population never went up everyone just logged in twice as much. Guess the devs opening both hardcore and allowing access to all quests, expansions for what 5 - 6 months was just a bad bad bad idea and obviously lead to a mass exodus from the game. Just like everything else they have done.

https://www.playeraudit.com/trends

Using this data which is in fact based on real data it clearly shows that weekly logins peaked around 2700 and has dropped to around 2000 logins meaning that we have gained 600 logins weekly since the polls the wholist this data is clearly more reliable than any of the data you have not provided to back up your opinions.



FACT: More people want no level cap raise than people wanting a cap raise. The poll that gathered 200 votes a couple of months ago and the overwhelming result opposing the level cap means that even when forum bias is applied, the result is still extremely trustworthy.

Fact : "There is no such thing as an authoritative poll. None. No one poll should ever be taken as authoritative,” said Bill Schneider, professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.

Anyone can google it and see it for themselves



FACT: There has NEVER been a player questionaire to measure the happiness of players and what the majority of playstyles is. Without asking those questions, developers are forced to rely on statistics like "What is the most favorite class", "How many logins per day", "Most common quest difficulty" making it possible to realize a pattern but impossible to realize the reason behind the results.

Fact: this could indeed be true I have no idea. But SSG does at least have a PC whether or not it equally represents the player population as a whole is debatable to say the least. But clearly asking everyone their opinion would lead to nothing but more chaos.



FACT: What players say and what players need is often quite different as studies have shown. You may say "I want to raise the level cap" but what you may need is "I want something to do". Others may say "I don't want new gear to invalidate old gear" but what they may mean is "I don't care how much effort it takes to max my character again, I will do it". Others say "Population is low and I can't complete the quests" but they may mean "I want to play with other people and I don't care how or why that happens".

Fact: Another opinion of yours without any links to said data. Possibly not even a truth.



The point is: Given the failure of the leaders (the developers) in the past, a majority vote seems like the next option to consider. The perfect solution would be for the devs to actually hire an analyst to figure out what the players need, but I fear that may never happen.

Note: You may say "It's not the developers' fault that the playerbase is declining. It's the age of the game.". To that I have to ask: Has the population of people playing chess declined? Has the population of people playing dungeons and dragons declined? No. A game will remain relevant as long as what it offers is timeless. If an idle game offers a counter that reaches from 1 to 1000 in various ways, the counter is going to reach 1000 at some point. Getting an awesome piece of gear after 10000 runs of The Grotto is not timeless. Raising the level cap every time a X number of players reach it is not timeless. Letting different people play together is timeless. And this is why for a company that makes a MMORPG, players playing together should be more important to please than people playing solo like some people in this thread seem to be. (What kind of reason is "I want the level raised so I can finally solo the raids" anyway? OMG) But only when there is a choice to be made to please one or the other. Often there is a choice to please both.

How exactly do you know SSG does not employ some type of analyst. Fact: you don't thus and opinion at best and may not even be a truth.

I have yet so see anything at all but your opinions at best which is in fact not a fact and may not even be a truth.

You brought up facts lets see them show that indisputable evidence you have access to. I'll check back in a few hours while you compile those facts.

A fact is something that's indisputable, based on empirical research and quantifiable measures. Facts go beyond theories. They're proven through calculation and experience, or they're something that definitively occurred in the past.

Fact: A square has four sides

[kanordog]

(What kind of reason is "I want the level raised so I can finally solo the raids" anyway? OMG) But only when there is a choice to be made to please one or the other. Often there is a choice to please both.

Lol

I think they want to solo endgame raid to get the items that are useful for two levels, 29-30 then grind for better gear at lvl 31...

[Firebreed]

snip

Don't bother man, they just won't budge.
It's the same 3 guys that quote post after post typing "ts ts this ain't a fact tis actually an opinion reee".
They have no arguments so all they do is try and dispute what's already posted.
We made our point clearly, and supported it. Devs will ultimately decide how to proceed.
Let them be.

[Mglaxix]

Don't bother man, they just won't budge.
It's the same 3 guys that quote post after post typing "ts ts this ain't a fact tis actually an opinion reee".
They have no arguments so all they do is try and dispute what's already posted.
We made our point clearly, and supported it. Devs will ultimately decide how to proceed.
Let them be.

Yeah you made your point supported it alright holding onto a thread that is 7+ years old posted from an employee who may or may not be employed by a company that no longer owns a any interest in said product and expecting that to have some impact on a new ownership group to abide by and you hold up as your holy grail.

You post plenty of opinions as facts but when it comes right down to it you don't have a fact to show for any of those opinions that I see anywhere.

Maybe instead of trying to buffalo people into believing something that just isn't true you should be honest and just say you don't want a level cap increase because it is going to negatively impact you because you are the only one you can speak for no one elected or appointed you spokesperson for me on anyone else that I am aware of.

I can respect honesty, but I have not seen much of that in this thread. Posting a bunch of your opinions and stating that they are facts with nothing at all to back them up is that being honest or is that you being selfish, spoiled. illogical, and just trying to make sure your agenda is heard and seen as valid. Perhaps that is a few of us saying hey now wait just a minute lets see those facts you are talking about and then we can actually have a real discussion.

epic destiny revamp
level cap increase
new classes
new races
new feats
new enhancement trees
new content
hardcore
augment revamp
reaper trees

These things and more have or will continue to impact everyone in someway no doubt but the sky did not fall like they said it would when cap was raised to 25, 28, or 30 if history holds true which it does repeat itself over and over again some of us will stay some of us will leave and some will join that is a fact. You can sit at level 30 as long as you like no one is forcing you to move on up.

[KoobTheProud]

i firmly anticipate a cap-increase will provide less of an obstacle going forward, than any new "horizontal" systems. and will not relegate alt play to the very back of the bus, even as it keeps being asked to get up and slide one row back, every year or so.

I'm pretty sure lack of an endgame will kill DDO.

I lived through the winter after MotU released after everybody had played through the content a couple of times and left for other games. That's where my pocket guild was born in the spring of 2013 because my old guild had emptied out and the bigger guilds on Cannith had not been formed yet. Cannith became the default server for quite awhile and that's what saved the pop there from drying up completely.

This is 2020 not 2013. I highly doubt that DDO has an extra life left if the game empties out again.

[Bjond]

Has the population of people playing dungeons and dragons declined? No.

Actually, it declined steadily since it's creation. It seems to spike and rise with new edition releases (https://dungeonvault.com/how-many-dnd-players-are-there-worldwide/) only to start declining again after a while.

SSG's strategy is entirely on retention, not recruitment. IMHO, that's a recipe for slow decay and eventual failure. It's a style that's deeply embedded in everything they do. Nudging it in any new direction will be difficult.

[ggmarquez]

I'm pretty sure lack of an endgame will kill DDO.

I lived through the winter after MotU released after everybody had played through the content a couple of times and left for other games. That's where my pocket guild was born in the spring of 2013 because my old guild had emptied out and the bigger guilds on Cannith had not been formed yet. Cannith became the default server for quite awhile and that's what saved the pop there from drying up completely.

This is 2020 not 2013. I highly doubt that DDO has an extra life left if the game empties out again.

i understand that feeling all too well... i still have 16 friends in my friends list that haven't logged in for over 8 years. some of them i miss quite a bit. but i also understand, leaving the level cap at 30 for another year won't bring any of them back. it just won't. we either let it go and move on, continuing to enjoy the game and remembering to spill one for the brothers we've lost along the way... or we cop out and pretend maybe this time it will be different. it won't. they will raise the level cap because it's part of the bigger picture, and we can chose to be hopeful about what that means, or cop out and decide prematurely that it can't be good for the game.

[Gniewomir]

A quest pack with no expansion is just that a quest pack an expansion adds something new to the game previously not available. So Shadowfell was indeed an expansion since the work had to be put in to create the iconic race system that was previously only setup to allow players to create a max level character to level 7 and have no real customized past life bonuses including heroic and iconic past lives in one this was just a couple of lines of code right.

Ravenloft introduced the sentient jewel system once again work had to be put into the game nothing new here is there all just few lines of code again.

Sharn introduced Minor artifacts while and extension of the sentient jewel system can certainly be viewed and an expansion of the possibilities of what can now be developed using this type of system. ie perhaps the upcoming augment revamp

Sharn was certainly less of an expansion than Ravenloft that must be why I did not purchase the top tier bundle. Lot of fluff with not much to offer Feywild is looking the same to me at this point.

I could care less personally about a level cap increase I merely accept it for what it is. I stated pretty clearly that the delay means nothing to me. I have plenty of things I am working towards that take precedence over a level cap increase. There are probably hundreds of posts since MoTU raised cap and every cap increase since and every time chicken little comes out on the forums and announces the end is near oh my oh my oh my the sky is falling and yet here we are still playing. This is just another one of those threads.

Like I said and expansion should in my eyes include something that expands the game the augment revamp which was posted 19 hours after my post hardly makes any mention of the augment revamp and what it will include I'm happy to see it get done is it an expansion that remains to be seen that alone is not worth $130 to me still. Level cap increase would have indeed been an expansion. Iconic and race those systems are already pretty much plug and play systems now that does not look like an expansion to me maybe to you but my opinion differs from yours on that and I will continue to define an expansion by that type of game expanding content it contains not trinkets and baubles.

Like i already said, it's not for you to decide what is expansion and what is not. Even a quest pack, significantly bigger than other ones, can be expansion, cause it do expand the game in a bigger than random update way. Maybe not in the way you would like to see, maybe it does not bring anything new (even if it's new only for marketing purposes), but it's still expansion if that will be devs choice. Your definition of expansion is very narrow, but to be honest your definition doesnt matter, you've got no rights here. Your only right is to decide what is worth buying for you and what isn't and it's the right i wholeheartedly support, it's free market. If you consider something not worth specific amount of money for you, sure, don't buy it, i'll be the first to support you. In fact i sincerly believe all ddo expansions are pretty overpriced and not worth buying if we speak about value on free market. The thing i was refferring to is that information that no new lvl cap will be included was enough for you to consider it not worth buying and for me it's silly thing to say when you know literally nothing about what it's going to include. For example (not gonna happen, but theoretically) what if expansion will include 50 quests and 10 raids? If we speak about quantity (here personal taste matters a lot) it could be the biggest expansion ever, even without new races, classes, mechanics. And yes, it would expand the game, cause expanding do not mean only adding "new stuff", but also increasing the amount of stuff we aleady have (check dictionary if you have any doubts about it). And like i said and it seems you confirmed it (by saying it's like an additional line of code): lets not pretend any expansion except motu made a significant difference. Both sharn and shadowfell brought only not sophisticated variations about stuff that was already here. And like i said, if you wanna fool yourself by cheap marketing and pretend that something is new thing only cause it have a different name and meaningless change in mechanic - go ahead.



I assume nothing, Jut like you know nothing about facts and the fact is you have nothing at all to back up your claims what so ever. If you did you would have posted them.

This is as close to fact as any non SSG employee can get to the current population of any server and wow it sure doesn't look like 90 players to me.

https://www.playeraudit.com/servers

Looks to me like most servers the population average for the quarter is over 200 players. Now of course those numbers are not as correct as SSG could provide but it does indeed give some insight into the population by server and your want to cut that number in more than half by your math that sounds a bit off to me. But hey it seems like you must have some facts to back up that 90 number you tossed out there so go ahead and show me the facts on how you came up with it otherwise it is just your some number you dreamed up.

Even with your bad info with 40 levels you still come up with 2.25 players a group is two players. No matter how many levels are introduced there will always be a limited number of players that is why some of us have invested in our alts at different levels to be able to quickly and efficiently log and help someone out while maintaining our main but hey what are alts for.

Over 95% of content can be two manned thanks to the forums and caving in to people most cap raids can be two manned now.

I already see grouping restrictions coming it's not like SSG is gonna let you continue to run reaper or bb with no level limits that has been taken advantage of for years now I knew this the moment I read the producers letter announcing the level cap increase way back in January 2020 that was 9 months ago and I had no doubt changes to epic rxp and bb were coming. You must have seen the level cap increase coming if not well... I am glad for the delay it simply gives me more to go ahead and continue on as is but unlike some I knew it was coming and was ready for it long before it went public..


Yawn. This is example. Example do not have to use exact data when example is used only to show how specific mechanic work. Here: how math work. Are you trying to deny that when you divide one constant number by another one that grows - the more 2nd one will grow, the lesser will be result? If you do not consider this a fact, all i can do is suggesting you going back to elementary school. Even basic reading lesson will be enough to notice that i never said there's 90 player on any server or that i'm refferring to any server population (but on the other hand - wayfinder can only wish for 90 players online at the same time) and there was no single suggestion that im referring to any real life situation. I said i'll give you a lesson how math works. I didn't said i'm going to analyse ddo population trends.

For 40 levels used in example - see above. Just an example. It could be 31. 32. 435634. I don't care. There's no a single situation possible mathematically when you divide something by bigger and bigger numbers and it'll give you bigger players/levels ratio.

Yes, there're already restrictions, but at least you can run all epics with full xp. You can run lvl 26-30 content with streak with players who do stay at cap. After cap is higher it'll no longer be an option. Players who will be at level cap, whatever it's going to be, won't be able to join anyone running 26/27 content with streak. This is obvious cause thats how streak works. And probably they wont be able to run lower epics with full xp, cause like i said, it would be pretty stupid to run lvl 20 content at lvl 40 with full xp (or lvl 32, 35, 50, 60, 70, whatever cap will be in future). There's a same chance for no additional 20+ grouping restrictions as for no grouping restrictions in heroics and lvl 1 characters carried through quests by lvl 20 ones with full xp.



It works for me over 90% of the time I see people in this thread already saying level cap increase will fracture the grouping those people must be having trouble doing something to attract players to their lfm's it's a pretty simple if you ask me. Raiding is a whole another ballgame there are channels for that and if your not using them that's on you. Less popular raids lol with all the oh no your gonna kill the raid scene how can any raid be unpopular there are a whopping 13 of them talk about boring hey let's go run that raid again for the 100th time this life it might be different. Yeah maybe if your running it on reaper and pushing the skulls but LN, LH no thanks. If your are sitting on the same lfm for 12 hours maybe it isn't your lfm at all why people are not clicking on it there is after all one common denominator that is not changing maybe that's why your sitting for 12 hours waiting. But hey I never heard of math right.

I don't care how I run solo, duo, grouped but I won't and don't need anyone to get rolling in anything other than a raid. Post and go if they join fine if not I roll on and jam to my tunes. I did not log in to sit on an lfm for 12 hours. I play when I play I doubt anyone can play exclusively during peak hours.

1. If you believe it's normal situation to be forced to use channels for random (not endgame r10) raiding - well, i'm afraid you're already too far into "niche game with no players is what i love" mentality. You can joke about it, but if you belive raiding is about farming 3 newest raids over and over again - well, i feel sorry for you. And if you want: choose any raid, any difficulty, tell me what i should write in description and i'll host it and you can see by yourself how quickly it'll fill outside peak hourse. Or wait, don't do it, cause you wouldn't be able to preted it's everything about "lfm not attractive enough" and instead of whining you might actually see that it's not the only problem and nice lfm won't fix starvation and wars over the world. Yawn.
2. How am i supposed to attrack players when i'm alone at my character level and there's noone else at my lvl online on server?
3. Attrack players to lfm, seriously? If you choose to live in denial and belive that the only reason why players are not able to fill party is lack of pink hearts in description, there's not much anyone here can explain you. I could argue with someone who is at least able to see the reality beyond his rose colored glasses. But at least i learned that hundreds of players have been asking for years for a server merge cause they dont know how to post proper lfm. And that newbies who leave the game cause of noone to play with have no idea that two players is group too! What a fool everyone except you is.
4. And i don't care how you run. I know how i do, i know what i enjoy, i know what i'm looking for in multiplayer game and your opinion in this matter means literally nothing to me. But it would be nice if one day you could try any popular multiplayer game with at even average population and compare the grouping to grouping in ddo. I know you love ddo and you could play it alone, but it could be refreshing for you to try game with good population and compare it to ddo fairly. If you're able to.

[ggmarquez]

your opinion in this matter means literally nothing to me.

this is pretty much where all ddoforum arguments both start and end.

[Gniewomir]

this is pretty much where all ddoforum arguments both start and end.

Are you trying to tell me that if someone enjoy playing alone/duo/twomanning raids - i should enjoy it too? Please read what i was talking about.

[Faltout]

If you want to post your facts post then post the facts. Don't just post your opinion show us all the highest the DDO population has ever been or what it is now... you can't period. If you could you would have.
http://ddoracle.com/images/MotU_one_year_later.jpg
That starts at 2012.
17500 logins daily before MotU
25000 logins daily at MotU.
15000 logins daily a year after MotU. (less than before MotU).
http://ddoracle.com/images/serverLoadQuarterly.big.png
This is from last quarter.
6000 logins daily.
Keep in mind that those logins are with the population boost provided by the pandemic and the free-to-play deal.

You linked playeraudit but this is a tool that has only been around for a year. DDOracle has been around a lot longer, making this comparison possible. Also, I have been playing the game since 2012 and I do remember how many players there were and how many there are now. (And how higher the solo percentage is).


Fact : "There is no such thing as an authoritative poll. None. No one poll should ever be taken as authoritative,” said Bill Schneider, professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.
I don't know why you're quoting bill schneider. I googled and I found that this quote is from a political article about the failure of polls during the 2016 US election. Everything from such an article is from people scrambling to give ******** explanations about whatever.
What I have is math: https://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm
By using this neat calculator with the numbers: confidence level 95%, sample size 236, population 2500, percentage 80%, you find that the confidence interval is 4.86%. Which means that if the voters were unbiased, a universal vote from the population would be at the worst 75% against raising level cap. Now I don't think that voters were totally unbiased, so you can introduce a larger error margin. However, it's never going to be as high as 30% (which would make the vote result 50%-50% and thus still a polarizing issue)
(the poll can be found here: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/511645-Raise-lvl-cap)


Fact: Another opinion of yours without any links to said data. Possibly not even a truth.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/988332-some-people-say-give-the-customers-what-they-want-but
https://uxmyths.com/post/746610684/myth-21-people-can-tell-you-what-they-want
https://blog.prototypr.io/what-people-say-they-need-862fc8f365eb
Can you find a document saying that "People know what they want (at least most of the time) and express it"?


How exactly do you know SSG does not employ some type of analyst. Fact: you don't thus and opinion at best and may not even be a truth.
I didn't present that as a fact. But it's pretty evident they do not have that kind of analyst. Otherwise, there would have been a player survey by now. And not a forum class balance survey (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/439018-Player-Character-Balance), but a playstyle survey to get to know their playerbase.

[Question2005]

Reading this thread is sad. Its like some people cant imagine how DDO can have an expansion that adds something new without it being more powercreep loot.

How about instead of rushing a new expansion out, they fix bugs and revamp obsolete stuff?

Almost all buffs/debuffs are obsolete with the power creep. If keeping buffs up and dispelling enemy buffs were important like in D&D, that would be an extra element of gameplay rather than just "spam AOE CC + damage + instant kills LMAO". Make combat more tactical rather than just having a caster delete an entire encounter with meteor. Even in high reaper, the zergfest just looks silly, AOE CC -> AOE spam -> couple of instant kills -> zerg zerg zerg. It looks NOTHING like how a D&D adventure should be at all.

What if vanguards were a viable playstyle useful from 1-30? Their role could be that of CC/debuffer. They would do less direct damage but enable the party to deal more. Their current role is "newbies who try to play it hate it" (no, a tank build that just blocks in KT isn't a vanguard build).

Tons of old content and mechanics that could be revamped. TR cache, finding a way to get most players on the same server, more bank slots, fixing obsolete loot, fixing the outdated scaling in level 20 quests, add quest teleports to old wilderness (nobody enjoys running to chains of flames), etc...instead of pushing out new loot that people are struggling to find space for. Sharn is ridiculous, all these BTC artifacts that you NEED to keep around and it just clogs up your TR cache because you cant move it to alts. Its so stupid.

There are so many things you could do that doesn't REQUIRE "more loot with bigger numbers". Come on, THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX!

[Bjond]

There are so many things you could do that doesn't REQUIRE "more loot with bigger numbers". Come on, THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX!

Preach on! :D

One of the styles I play in just about every MMO is the "DPS tank"; ie. if there are 4 classes that can tank, I'll play the one that has the highest skill floor/ceiling on tanking in return for extra DPS for the role. In the typical MMO, tanks can DPS just fine, though it will be lower than a DPS class -- usually by about 20%.

In DDO, what it takes to make a tank nearly zeroes the DPS. I do have "tanky DPS" characters. My bard can tank Strahd and Gish, my uh PM/meleethingie can tank mounds in Baba, but these are special cases. Neither one can step up for tanking in r7+ where it really starts to be needed outside raids.

It's a style of play I really miss.

[Firebreed]

Reading this thread is sad. Its like some people cant imagine how DDO can have an expansion that adds something new without it being more powercreep loot.

Hit the nail on the head.

[Zakharov]

actually they have already stated the level cap will increase to 40, in small increments, probably 2 levels at a time.

Those statements still seem preliminary, hopefully our feedback can change their mind.



it might seem like i'm trying to be a jerk... i'm really not. but hear me out. what you just said is basically, if we start right now, we can keep the level cap at 30 for the next 10 years. which (try to imagine it, please do try) is literally exactly the same thing as if the level cap had been 10 for the past 10 years. like, it's just changing what # level you cram 10 years worth of content into.

You know very well it's not remotely the same thing. And yes, I do think keeping the lvl cap at 30 permanently will be better for the long term health of the game, unless you foresee the games population increasing x 10 any time soon?



I believe Friebreed said was projection not protection.

But if he wants to do a projection perhaps Firebreed and the rest should get in a wayback time machine and take a look at when level cap was increased to level 30 in https://ddowiki.com/page/Update_29_Release_Notes and ask themselves why oh why oh why would SSG increase the base level of quests to 32 if they had not already been putting in place a level cap increase. Now I can't speak for SSG but I came to the conclusion way back in 2015 that the next level cap increase was already in the works....... but hey that takes some serious deduction powers I mean after all if cap was going to stay at 30 why oh why oh why would SSG increase the base level of any quest to 32. Oh it must have been to separate the player population more, no it was for more of a challenge, nah it was because they could not properly scale the mobs in the raid without increasing the base level of the quest.

Most likely of those seems the last one, not because they couldn't but because it's just easier to up the quest lvl than anything else. With a small team and limited budget, the quickest and easiest path is probably the answer.



The funny thing is SSG already has 30 base level 31 quests and 41 base level 32 quests since everyone feels like BB is to run at +2 over normal that would mean they have been running all these quests underlevel and performing just fine tons of R10 completions, raids being two manned and group completions on R10 as well.

Yes, they can continue raising the lvls of quests and raids and people will continue beating them just fine without raising the lvl cap - so no need!



But hey there are only 13 level 30+ raids in the game oh no that's not true 3 more are coming in U47 so that makes it 15 raids at level 30+ so even if cap was raised by two levels all these raids would still be relevant for the raiding community at cap now of course those that have already acquired what they want will move on but some of them have already.

Well not all of those are equally relevant, but also raising the lvl cap makes previous content obsolete in a way that other advancement systems they could implement wouldn't. For example - new regular higher lvl quest packs will have better loot than previous raids, so why bother running those raids? Plus, you are only talking about lvl 32.. what about 33-40 which are supposedly coming? Even if they can keep those raids relevant at 32, they won't be at 40. So will we just have to be happy with 1 or 2 raids at 40? Players who prefer raiding will have quit long before that point.



The same people made the same arguments when level cap was raised to level 30, level 28, and level 25 we're not ready it will separate the player base and on and on and on yet here they are years later making the same excuses once again having no ability to project that an inevitable level cap increase was coming. I mean after all when you look at it https://ddowiki.com/page/Level_cap it is very clear that this has been the longest stretch in the history of DDO without a level cap increase. But hey I am sure all the people saying it is going to kill the game, separate the player base have all the data to back up and prove what they are saying is true otherwise it is simply their opinion and nothing more.

Unless SSG releases official numbers we can't provide that kind of proof but I can just relay anecdotally - the years between f2p and Underdark were the most fun I've ever had playing this game. A larger player population spread across only 20 levels meant tons of people to group with at almost any lvl and multiple raids all day every day even at off times. The friends and guildies I ran with mostly raided and ran quests at the cap. Then the lvl cap increased to 25, spreading players out more, rendering old raids and quests obsolete, and giving them nothing to do at the new cap except for 1 raid.

The way Underdark was handled essentially felt like the developers telling all of my friends and guildies "we don't want anyone running anything at the lvl cap anymore, so if that's your play style then we don't like you, we don't want you here, go away".

Of course what happened over the next few months? They almost all quit playing. So I don't have to predict anything because it already happened - Underdark basically destroyed the game for many of us. So please understand some people are passionate about this because we already lived through it before and are afraid of the same thing happening again.



All SSG has to do now it roll out 2 or 3 raids per expansion and one per quest pack release on average that would be 4 or 5 raids added per year and look at that you increase the level cap and introduce new raids with new level base at 33+ and everyone has a chance to run the older raids in pugs because of better gear being made available thus for all of those myself included who have not bothered to run any number of current cap raids can do so with PUG groups and be gaining some gear they haven't managed to get yet or haven't felt like they could run for whatever reason

I think these arguments miss a few points:


Turbine/SSG has never added raids at that rate when increasing the lvl cap before
Adding horizontal advancement rather than vertical can still increase your character power enough to make older raids easier without raising the lvl cap
Higher lvl quests will have better gear than current raids, reducing the chance anyone runs those raids at all


Theoretically, if they added new raids at the rate you suggest (5 raids/year) and raised the lvl cap by only 1/year, then yes that would keep the end game pretty healthy. However, that will still harm grouping at all lower levels as people are further spread out. We really need a solution that accounts for different play styles at all levels or we will lose players.



SSG can hopefully take the opportunity to tweak epic destinies, epic feats, enhancement trees, classes, and whatever else is in their roadmap to the future expansion and improvement of DDO not stagnating way back in 2015.

Yes I hope they do all those things but none of that requires raising the lvl cap.



History repeats itself read the history of DDO level cap increases

At launch (February 2006) it was 10.
With Module 3: Demon Sands (October 2006) it was increased to 12.
With Module 4: Reaver's Bane (April 2007) it was increased to 14.
With Module 6: The Thirteenth Eclipse (January 2008) it was increased to 16.
With Eberron Unlimited (September 2009) it was increased to 20.
With Menace of the Underdark (June 2012) it was increased to epic level 25.
With Shadowfell Conspiracy (August 2013) it was increased to 28.
With The Codex War (December 2015) it was increased to 30.
With announced Feywild expansion (late 2020), it will increase above 30. It should increase slowly over several updates until 40.

And you can do a forum search and read all the history of doom and gloom as several of these level cap increases were introduced and yet here we are despite all their projections of all of those people who got it wrong in the past. Some left, some stayed, and some joined that's about all you can say about level cap increases. It clearly did not lead to the death of DDO. History will simply repeat itself once again.

Someone proclaiming "doom and gloom" doesn't necessarily mean the servers will be shut off. It can just mean "all my friends quit playing because of the direction the game is going, so I guess I'll quit too". To anyone who quit after thinking that, the game is essentially dead to them and the doomsayers were right.



A group is two or more people not 6 or 12.

Please list all the heroic quests that cannot be two manned let alone run solo

Tomb of the Burning Heart - solo-able - two man at most = flesh to stone cookies, scrolls, pets, probably a few other ways to do it

Xorian Cipher - solo-able - two man at most - see above

Vault of Night - two man - four at most - hey it's a raid

Twilight Forge - two man

Titan Awakes - two man

Not much else I can see before anyone can cap level 20 but hey maybe I missed something please go ahead

I don't see how any of this is relevant at all? No one is stopping you from running everything solo or duo. Some people would prefer fuller groups - increasing the lvl cap and spreading players out more will make it harder to do that.



So you want to allow players to cap 30 farm high end reaper xp then step back and help their friends farm up heroic rxp. You'd be better off doing what I have done and parking an rxp toon at level 4 with 36 points, a level 6 with 36 points, a level 9 with 39 points, a level 13 with 39 points, and a level 15 with 42 points all possible with one run to 30 and a TR and not even that on some of them. Instead of wasting your time de-leveling, re-leveling, respecing, re-gearing your main. If they need help beyond what a level 15 character can do they need more than your help. But hey that would never work with as hard as it is to get rxp. SSG made it even easier to do with this with the free quest coupon for extra accounts and as a result you can facilitate grouping at all levels you deem appropriate that is what alts are for in some cases.

That's not how the theoretical auto scaling system would work, it would reduce your power to match the group leader, including all gear/abilities/etc. That's the only solution I could see working if they plan to continually increase the lvl cap, but it would require a ton of work and probably break a bunch of stuff. That's just one reason I'm arguing against any lvl cap increase.

The fact that your solution is to create alts for every lvl range should tell you the current situation does not work. Increasing the lvl cap will just make it worse.



A quest pack with no expansion is just that a quest pack an expansion adds something new to the game previously not available. So Shadowfell was indeed an expansion since the work had to be put in to create the iconic race system that was previously only setup to allow players to create a max level character to level 7 and have no real customized past life bonuses including heroic and iconic past lives in one this was just a couple of lines of code right.

Ravenloft introduced the sentient jewel system once again work had to be put into the game nothing new here is there all just few lines of code again.

Sharn introduced Minor artifacts while and extension of the sentient jewel system can certainly be viewed and an expansion of the possibilities of what can now be developed using this type of system. ie perhaps the upcoming augment revamp

Sharn was certainly less of an expansion than Ravenloft that must be why I did not purchase the top tier bundle. Lot of fluff with not much to offer Feywild is looking the same to me at this point.

This sounds like we are stuck in a marketing trap. They have to add something "new" or it won't sell as much, because some people will only buy it if it has something "new". I think new races and classes "expand" the possibilites more than sentient jewels or artifacts. Revamping the augment system has long been needed and could potentially be a great "expansion" of possibilities. I wish they would add all the missing spells from the players handbook, that would expand gameplay possibilities but I guess it's a harder sell.



I could care less personally about a level cap increase I merely accept it for what it is. I stated pretty clearly that the delay means nothing to me. I have plenty of things I am working towards that take precedence over a level cap increase. There are probably hundreds of posts since MoTU raised cap and every cap increase since and every time chicken little comes out on the forums and announces the end is near oh my oh my oh my the sky is falling and yet here we are still playing. This is just another one of those threads.

You can only speak for yourself. Were you playing before Underdark? Many of those players quit - for them the doomsayers were right.



Like I said and expansion should in my eyes include something that expands the game the augment revamp which was posted 19 hours after my post hardly makes any mention of the augment revamp and what it will include I'm happy to see it get done is it an expansion that remains to be seen that alone is not worth $130 to me still. Level cap increase would have indeed been an expansion. Iconic and race those systems are already pretty much plug and play systems now that does not look like an expansion to me maybe to you but my opinion differs from yours on that and I will continue to define an expansion by that type of game expanding content it contains not trinkets and baubles.

But a lvl cap increase means there is less content relevant at end game, which means a reduction in content - not expansion. Not everyone wants to pay for a reduction in content.



I assume nothing, Jut like you know nothing about facts and the fact is you have nothing at all to back up your claims what so ever. If you did you would have posted them.

This is as close to fact as any non SSG employee can get to the current population of any server and wow it sure doesn't look like 90 players to me.

https://www.playeraudit.com/servers

Looks to me like most servers the population average for the quarter is over 200 players. Now of course those numbers are not as correct as SSG could provide but it does indeed give some insight into the population by server and your want to cut that number in more than half by your math that sounds a bit off to me. But hey it seems like you must have some facts to back up that 90 number you tossed out there so go ahead and show me the facts on how you came up with it otherwise it is just your some number you dreamed up.

I can't tell if you are deliberately misinterpreting Gniewomir or not.. but it's obvious that 90 is a placeholder value. Let me rephrase to make it easier:

X players spread over 30 levels = X/30
X players spread over 40 levels = X/40
X players spread over 50 levels = X/50

Whatever value you plug in for X, increasing the total lvl range will reduce the average # of players per lvl.



Even with your bad info with 40 levels you still come up with 2.25 players a group is two players.

Saying "a group is two players" does not help your argument, it just makes it worse. We should not just accept that we can never fill groups and that 2 is "good enough". If you really want to only solo or duo than go ahead, but don't try to force everyone else into the same play style.



No matter how many levels are introduced there will always be a limited number of players that is why some of us have invested in our alts at different levels to be able to quickly and efficiently log and help someone out while maintaining our main but hey what are alts for.

I agree - no matter how many levels are introduced there will always be a limited number of players. That is just one reason that, so long as grouping with other players is tied to character lvl, they should never increase the lvl cap. By making alts for every lvl range you are admitting that the system does not work as is. If the playerbase were larger or the mechanics different, you wouldn't need to log into alts to help people, they would have no problems running in full groups at all levels without your alts.



Over 95% of content can be two manned thanks to the forums and caving in to people most cap raids can be two manned now.

Not sure how this is relevant.. and you seem to be asking for exactly the kind of power creep you're complaning about here?



It works for me over 90% of the time I see people in this thread already saying level cap increase will fracture the grouping those people must be having trouble doing something to attract players to their lfm's it's a pretty simple if you ask me. Raiding is a whole another ballgame there are channels for that and if your not using them that's on you. Less popular raids lol with all the oh no your gonna kill the raid scene how can any raid be unpopular there are a whopping 13 of them talk about boring hey let's go run that raid again for the 100th time this life it might be different. Yeah maybe if your running it on reaper and pushing the skulls but LN, LH no thanks. If your are sitting on the same lfm for 12 hours maybe it isn't your lfm at all why people are not clicking on it there is after all one common denominator that is not changing maybe that's why your sitting for 12 hours waiting. But hey I never heard of math right.

I don't care how I run solo, duo, grouped but I won't and don't need anyone to get rolling in anything other than a raid. Post and go if they join fine if not I roll on and jam to my tunes. I did not log in to sit on an lfm for 12 hours. I play when I play I doubt anyone can play exclusively during peak hours.

So your argument boils down to "I can just solo, so everything is fine". Well you don't represent all players and keeping the lvl cap the same won't affect your ability to solo, so what are you arguing for?

[ggmarquez]

I do think keeping the lvl cap at 30 permanently will be better for the long term health of the game, unless you foresee the games population increasing x 10 any time soon?

so the only acceptable timetable for level cap increase is when it coincides with a player-base growth of, what 1000%? yeah. good luck with that. :wink:

no, a permanent level cap is just a bad idea, unless you are trying to up-sell character slots and back space. once all players have max bank toons with all available inventory purchased, then what? sorry we are still pushing out level 29 gear... nothing doing. just gotta start ditching the old 29 gear. which was released on top of the older 29 gear. which invalidated the even older 29 gear. going back a decade. :wink:

looking ahead to level 40 and perhaps a demi-god system? sounds pretty rad.

[Gniewomir]

Yes, they can continue raising the lvls of quests and raids and people will continue beating them just fine without raising the lvl cap - so no need!

Btw i'm pretty sure except cosmetic ones like the "deleting levels" one from anniversary event - we've got no single lvl 30 item. So it's not like there's no space for at least few updates for lvl 30. Of course SSG prefer to raise level cap instead of it, cause it'll be easier to sell content with items that will serve for a few levels, not only at level 30, but it's not like there's no space in ddo for additional content. And like i said, it would be enough space for few updates if there'll be some extra mechanics added (similar to what reaper trees were supposed to be - some mechanics that do work only in 30+ content, just like EDs work only at 20+ character level). If there'll be something very challanging to do at level 30 - people will farm lvl 30 gear and enjoy new challanges. Win-win. In fact, after reading your reply to

Quote Originally Posted by Mglaxix View Post
The funny thing is SSG already has 30 base level 31 quests and 41 base level 32 quests since everyone feels like BB is to run at +2 over normal that would mean they have been running all these quests underlevel and performing just fine tons of R10 completions, raids being two manned and group completions on R10 as well.

I have additional thought: how ridicule game will be after raising level cap. Right now elite/r1 lvl 32 quests are pretty easy, with new levels, new gear, new character power - running lvl 32 quests like sharn with lvl 32 character will be as challanging as running korthos with lvl 20 toon. Any content level/character level balance will be invalidated and it'll be more like: challanging content for your character is your character level +10 for a content level.



Unless SSG releases official numbers we can't provide that kind of proof but I can just relay anecdotally - the years between f2p and Underdark were the most fun I've ever had playing this game. A larger player population spread across only 20 levels meant tons of people to group with at almost any lvl and multiple raids all day every day even at off times. The friends and guildies I ran with mostly raided and ran quests at the cap. Then the lvl cap increased to 25, spreading players out more, rendering old raids and quests obsolete, and giving them nothing to do at the new cap except for 1 raid.

Same here. I still remember when it was nothing wierd to see 3-4 tempest spines at level at the same time (even with lvl 20 cap, in fact i was not here when cap was lower), all of them with full party. Nowadays - i do not recall 2 full lfms for the same raid in ages, no matter- heroic, epic or endgame one. And most of the time all heroic raids are impossible to fill.

[Amorais]

Just to add not every player is an end game reaper only uber death machine from Avernus with every bit of end game gear.

Some, like me, have no characters at cap.

I just have eleventy billion alts and love playing all of them.

That said, I'm glad there's no increase. Its already starting to get power creep tastic, which is what happened to my game I exclusively played - Everquest 2. Where the power creep made 95% of the game obsolete, and by that I mean no point playing at all and there's literally not a single player in older areas.

Power Creep = lingering game death IMO.

One example - Barovian weapons. Which , for casuals like me, rendered every single weapon in the game from level 10 to 19 obsolete, even named.

[Erokir]

FACT: The game's population has never stopped declining over the years. You could argue about what the specific causes are but one thing is for certain: Whatever the developers are doing, it's not working. Pretending that their choice of raising the level cap must be sound because they are "the devs" is wrong because they are the only ones at fault for losing players. (See note below)

At least according to the DDO audit posted in this thread, the game's population increased significantly this year in correlation to all of the content being Free to Play.

When your first "fact" turns out not to be true, it makes me disinclined to regard the rest of your "facts" as such. Perhaps we'd all be better off acknowledging that we're posting opinions, unless we have some sort of official documentation to support assertions of fact.

[Erokir]

Actually, it declined steadily since it's creation. It seems to spike and rise with new edition releases (https://dungeonvault.com/how-many-dnd-players-are-there-worldwide/) only to start declining again after a while.

SSG's strategy is entirely on retention, not recruitment. IMHO, that's a recipe for slow decay and eventual failure. It's a style that's deeply embedded in everything they do. Nudging it in any new direction will be difficult.

What are some ways that they could make their business model more recruitment oriented?

[rabidfox]

At least according to the DDO audit posted in this thread, the game's population increased significantly this year in correlation to all of the content being Free to Play.

When your first "fact" turns out not to be true, it makes me disinclined to regard the rest of your "facts" as such. Perhaps we'd all be better off acknowledging that we're posting opinions, unless we have some sort of official documentation to support assertions of fact.

Which makes one wonder if they do a bundle with future expansions to include older content as part of that purchase, if that would aid in the overall health of the game enviroment (for adding in new players along the way). Combined with a level jump where everyone is back on a fresh footing (well, more or less, past lives would still exists but depending on the stats of the newer endgame gear vs past life stats it might be a moot benift at the new cap) and it could have some overall appeal to attracting more new players to join.

[nokowi]

What are some ways that they could make their business model more recruitment oriented?

They could listen to players that talk about what is fun to play absent power level and power rewards.

Watching vets tell new players they are playing the game wrong while they themselves only know one way to play, so sad...

[Bjond]

What are some ways that they could make their business model more recruitment oriented?

Wrote a reply and then realized it was probably well into the TL;DR wall-of-text essay. Here's the same thing cut down to a bullet list:


Buying lastest expansion includes ALL older packs and expansion
Advertise the buy newest=ALL shift
Offer recruitment bonuses for bringing in new VIP players
Supreme+7 tomes become account wide
Supreme+6 tomes become account wide @ S8/10 cost
Supreme+(lower and x->x+1) removed
All Epic Destinies are born with maximum XP (though not max karma)
Change all raid & quest flagging to be account-wide and persistent
Any Heroic/Racial/Iconic PL earns 5 racial AP (up to 15 total for 36p builds)
Document and standardize no-fail DCs for each level range

In general, any character power-up offered in the store that is less than the best should be account-wide. Similar steps across the game for one-tier down "time in character" things should also become account-wide. We want new to catch up fast, but that doesn't mean we want new = vet instantly -- just close. SSG releases new content fast enough to keep those top hamsters wheeling away even with sub-top going account-wide.

Other MMOs do this via tiered gear. A new player or alt might earn sub-top gear in a month that an old character spent years acquiring and out-growing, but no one feels that their vet character gets cheated when that happens. They're just overjoyed someone wants the gear that is junk to them. End result is that a new character in sub-top gear makes a decent (but not top) contribution and everyone can group effectively together fairly quickly -- without the newbie having to spend a multi-year slog repeating all their ancient efforts verbatim.

[Malaegys]

You're right. Besides, if we only relied on facts to live, we would be doomed. Humans use their inference ability to combine current facts and history (experience) in order to predict the future and make decisions. Some do it better, some do it worse. And if all this talk has not made you see what the other side's arguments are, nothing will.

How about some facts then.

FACT: The game's population has never stopped declining over the years. You could argue about what the specific causes are but one thing is for certain: Whatever the developers are doing, it's not working. Pretending that their choice of raising the level cap must be sound because they are "the devs" is wrong because they are the only ones at fault for losing players. (See note below)

FACT: More people want no level cap raise than people wanting a cap raise. The poll that gathered 200 votes a couple of months ago and the overwhelming result opposing the level cap means that even when forum bias is applied, the result is still extremely trustworthy.

FACT: There has NEVER been a player questionaire to measure the happiness of players and what the majority of playstyles is. Without asking those questions, developers are forced to rely on statistics like "What is the most favorite class", "How many logins per day", "Most common quest difficulty" making it possible to realize a pattern but impossible to realize the reason behind the results.

FACT: What players say and what players need is often quite different as studies have shown. You may say "I want to raise the level cap" but what you may need is "I want something to do". Others may say "I don't want new gear to invalidate old gear" but what they may mean is "I don't care how much effort it takes to max my character again, I will do it". Others say "Population is low and I can't complete the quests" but they may mean "I want to play with other people and I don't care how or why that happens".

The point is: Given the failure of the leaders (the developers) in the past, a majority vote seems like the next option to consider. The perfect solution would be for the devs to actually hire an analyst to figure out what the players need, but I fear that may never happen.

Note: You may say "It's not the developers' fault that the playerbase is declining. It's the age of the game.". To that I have to ask: Has the population of people playing chess declined? Has the population of people playing dungeons and dragons declined? No. A game will remain relevant as long as what it offers is timeless. If an idle game offers a counter that reaches from 1 to 1000 in various ways, the counter is going to reach 1000 at some point. Getting an awesome piece of gear after 10000 runs of The Grotto is not timeless. Raising the level cap every time a X number of players reach it is not timeless. Letting different people play together is timeless. And this is why for a company that makes a MMORPG, players playing together should be more important to please than people playing solo like some people in this thread seem to be. (What kind of reason is "I want the level raised so I can finally solo the raids" anyway? OMG) But only when there is a choice to be made to please one or the other. Often there is a choice to please both.

Most of your facts are based on things you do not have enough data on to prove to be a "fact".

The games you describe don't rely on technology to play successfully. This game does. The technology of this game is very dated, and a lot of gamers prefer newer technology to old.
There would be an absolute limit they can do to improve this game with the technology they have, and it is clear they simply don't have the resources to improve that technology in a meaningful way.
Are the devs necessarily doing the best things to improve the game and draw in new players? Probably not. It is very difficult to know the "best thing" to do, and even an analyst would still only be making an educated guess.
Gaming is a very difficult industry to nail down, and there is no majority opinion on almost any aspect of it.

A FACT is that WoW does better than DDO in playerbase and sales, with far less microtransactions built into it per capita. Yet WoW is a far simpler game to play, with better graphics and technology.
I personally find WoW's gameplay boring as hell. You have no real decisions to make in the game, you just move from golden question mark to golden question mark...but clearly more gamers prefer it to DDO.

So an analyst is going to tell the Devs...make your game more like WoW...is that what you want?

Now I do agree that making the game easier to play together and more rewarding to play together would probably be preferable. A big hurdle to bringing new players into this game is the quality of life issues with the gameplay...it just isn't friendly to new players. New players have a pretty steep learning curve to understand this game and most of the menus, interfaces, and group finding is not very user friendly.
Another issue is that the key grind of this game is replaying the content, yet the old content hasn't been updated in a long time. If you want the primary grind to feel meaningful then you need to update that grind, which is the old content.
So maybe we need an expansion that updates the quality of life features of this game and the old content before we need one that raises the level cap?

[Malaegys]

Wrote a reply and then realized it was probably well into the TL;DR wall-of-text essay. Here's the same thing cut down to a bullet list:


Buying lastest expansion includes ALL older packs and expansion
Advertise the buy newest=ALL shift
Offer recruitment bonuses for bringing in new VIP players
Supreme+7 tomes become account wide
Supreme+6 tomes become account wide @ S8/10 cost
Supreme+(lower and x->x+1) removed
All Epic Destinies are born with maximum XP (though not max karma)
Change all raid & quest flagging to be account-wide and persistent
Any Heroic/Racial/Iconic PL earns 5 racial AP (up to 15 total for 36p builds)
Document and standardize no-fail DCs for each level range

In general, any character power-up offered in the store that is less than the best should be account-wide. Similar steps across the game for one-tier down "time in character" things should also become account-wide. We want new to catch up fast, but that doesn't mean we want new = vet instantly -- just close. SSG releases new content fast enough to keep those top hamsters wheeling away even with sub-top going account-wide.

Other MMOs do this via tiered gear. A new player or alt might earn sub-top gear in a month that an old character spent years acquiring and out-growing, but no one feels that their vet character gets cheated when that happens. They're just overjoyed someone wants the gear that is junk to them. End result is that a new character in sub-top gear makes a decent (but not top) contribution and everyone can group effectively together fairly quickly -- without the newbie having to spend a multi-year slog repeating all their ancient efforts verbatim.

Part of the issue with recruitment is the early game...it has a steep learning curve and is very dated. Yes they have newer areas, but the areas the game shunts you into first are old. They need to revamp the old content if they want new players to enjoy it. That and the quality of life features need improvement really badly.

[OrodelaSol]

Raising the level cap to 40 for Legendary past lives and all the benefits they bestow will not be forced upon you so just tr @ lvl 20 or etr @ lvl 30 or stay at current level forever and move on the road you choose. This merely opens a new one and all of its wonders for those who choose to travel it. Oh, and there would be more people filling up lfms if they were not so busy on the forums complaining about how their lfm never filled...just saying :)

[Weemadarthur]

What are some ways that they could make their business model more recruitment oriented?

Quite simply they could advertise the game. This is a game that after nearly 15 years a lot of people still dont know even exists. I cant express my disappointment at how SSG completely fumbled marketing Ravenloft and more recently the free quest coupon give away. With just a little initiative someone at SSG could have at least gone to the effort of doing an email blast to try and reconnect with the ex player base. Add a banner campaign on any game site and either of those landmark events would have drawn quite a large increase in new players.

the sad fact is though that SSG like Turbine before them has no interest whatsoever in advertising this game. It really is a shame as the older the game gets the harder its going to be to draw attention to it. Unless they get another iconic licence like Ravenloft or Haunted Halls (Isle of Dread hint hint) any marketing done now will have to battle against the fact its an old game with sub par graphics.

[KoobTheProud]

The questions on a level cap increase are pretty simple for me:

1. How many new players will join DDO because the level cap was increased?

2. Of those players how many will spend any significant money on DDO?

3. How many ex-players will rejoin DDO because the level cap was increased?

4. Of those players how many will spend any significant money on DDO?

5. How many current players that choose to continue playing will increase their spending on DDO because the level cap was increased?

6. How many current players that choose to continue playing will decrease their spending on DDO because the level cap was increased?

7. How many current players will quit DDO because the level cap was increased?

Those 7 questions should be the ones that SSG has a pretty good handle on before they undertake another level cap increase after stating that 30 was going to be the permanent cap the last time they raised the cap from 28 to 30.

The 28 to 30 cap increase was not a happy time for many players and many of us either left the game or changed our spending habits in a way that adversely affected DDO's bottom line.

The statement that 30 was going to be a hard cap was an attempt to mollify the players who were having a hard time with the overall concept of a level cap increase at that point. It accompanied a significant reduction in the overall XP that Turbine had planned to have for level 30 - with an initial 10M XP requirement cut down to the current 8.25M XP requirement by release. The scaling of the XP required was also changed, with lower epic levels requiring less XP, such that the increase in overall XP was not really felt until close to the old 28 cap.

Again, the 7 questions I opened this post with should be on everybody's mind, particularly SSG.

The well is not endless. In fact the well is drier than most of us realize at this point. The answer is to fill the well back up with things that the majority of the players want, to encourage us to spend money to dip our buckets in the well. Making the well deeper so that we have to pull harder on the bucket line to get what we want? Well...

[kanordog]

Those 7 questions should be the ones that SSG has a pretty good handle on before they undertake another level cap increase after stating that 30 was going to be the permanent cap the last time they raised the cap from 28 to 30.




Well said! +1


Raising the level cap to 40 for Legendary past lives and all the benefits they bestow will not be forced upon you so just tr @ lvl 20 or etr @ lvl 30 or stay at current level forever and move on the road you choose. This merely opens a new one and all of its wonders for those who choose to travel it. Oh, and there would be more people filling up lfms if they were not so busy on the forums complaining about how their lfm never filled...just saying :)


To grind out those extra levels and extra gear that needed to be able to play at cap
OR
to stay at 30 and play with the few who are breezing through today's endgame

WILL BE forced upon us.

[OrodelaSol]

Well said! +1




To grind out those extra levels and extra gear that needed to be able to play at cap
OR
to stay at 30 and play with the few who are breezing through today's endgame

WILL BE forced upon us.

No, you choose to grind out those extra lives and play at the new cap. You can also choose to stay at the old cap. This is going to happen so I am choosing to embrace it. Maybe they will make Legendary reincarnations go from 40 to 30 so only needing to go the Legendary levels but who knows. And the word "grind" is probably the most overused word on the forums. If it is so awful don't do it. Again, I understand what is mean my you feeling forced to do this to be able to play with the elite but only you are forcing yourself to do this. I love this game and welcome the upcoming challenges so your grind is my joy. Find your joy.

[HuneyMunster]

What if vanguards were a viable playstyle useful from 1-30? Their role could be that of CC/debuffer. They would do less direct damage but enable the party to deal more. Their current role is "newbies who try to play it hate it" (no, a tank build that just blocks in KT isn't a vanguard build).


That is an interesting idea for Vanguard. Vanguard does already have a few tools such as Stunning Shield that works on most monster types, vulnerability from Disorienting Smash an knockdown from Shield Rush. Maybe something like Dust or Ooze added to Shield to the Face or create more Shields with special debuffing effects.

[Faltout]

At least according to the DDO audit posted in this thread, the game's population increased significantly this year in correlation to all of the content being Free to Play.

When your first "fact" turns out not to be true, it makes me disinclined to regard the rest of your "facts" as such. Perhaps we'd all be better off acknowledging that we're posting opinions, unless we have some sort of official documentation to support assertions of fact.
Because the other poster did not believe me as well, I made the next post in the same page: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/518114-No-level-cap-increase-for-Feywild-as-per-Cordovan-s-weekly-stream?p=6361685&viewfull=1#post6361685

Most of your facts are based on things you do not have enough data on to prove to be a "fact".
I beg to differ. Obviously the facts about the poll and the studies about what players want vs. need are too complex to prove beyond doubt in such a forum. However, the declining numbers and the "no survey done ever" is absolutely true backed by hard evidence.

As for what I infer from those facts, those are extremely plausible opinions because they stem from those facts. However, there is a late trend in the world (mainly the US?) where facts and inferences seem to not have any value. Given that, I don't think I can say anything more to that.


The games you describe don't rely on technology to play successfully. This game does. The technology of this game is very dated, and a lot of gamers prefer newer technology to old.
There would be an absolute limit they can do to improve this game with the technology they have, and it is clear they simply don't have the resources to improve that technology in a meaningful way.
Are the devs necessarily doing the best things to improve the game and draw in new players? Probably not. It is very difficult to know the "best thing" to do, and even an analyst would still only be making an educated guess.
Gaming is a very difficult industry to nail down, and there is no majority opinion on almost any aspect of it.

A FACT is that WoW does better than DDO in playerbase and sales, with far less microtransactions built into it per capita. Yet WoW is a far simpler game to play, with better graphics and technology.
I personally find WoW's gameplay boring as hell. You have no real decisions to make in the game, you just move from golden question mark to golden question mark...but clearly more gamers prefer it to DDO.

So an analyst is going to tell the Devs...make your game more like WoW...is that what you want?
You say about my facts, and then proceed to make a bunch of arbitrary statements that may hold some truth, but oversimplify the matter. First of all, technology is the smallest factor of all when it comes to player retention. A player doesn't really see what technology is behind a game and how new it is. For all you know, DDO may employ some extremely new algorithms for path finding or may have the best database. You don't know and you don't care as long as you get the advertised gameplay.

The technology CAN be improved if it's what's needed to keep the game alive and grow. If that's the decision to be made and the dev team says "nah, we can't do that; oh well, shucks to be us", then that's on them like I said in my post. They are the ones responsible. Given that updating the technology may be something like DDO2, new games appear all the time with less capital than what DDO already should have from all those years of activity. Plus, DDO already has a playerbase, when a new game would need to start from scratch.

However, a game is much more than the technology it uses. A game is about activating the sense of "work -> reward earned" of a player, the sense of "victory over overwhelming odds" of the player, the sense of "providing opportunity for fun with friends", the sense of "mentally challenging the player", the sense of "discovery" of the player, the sense of "competition" of the player and many more.

A game can also activate some bad incentives like "don't want to miss out on opportunities", "sunken cost fallacy", "Mentally transform grind to work for a reward to make it feel like I deserve it" and other stuff that brings out the addictive behavior of people and is also unpredictable because players may leave if they can't handle it anymore.

Now you say "WoW" is more popular? Perhaps it's because of advertisement? Again, the devs fault.
You say "An analyst will tell the team to become like WoW". However, WoW is not a successful game if you and I see it as boring (given that we play the same genre). Players are inflated by advertisement. How about hiring an analyst that can do "the work" which includes figuring out what the players really want instead of a bs analyst that would just say "Be like WoW" or "You can't improve technology, just keep adding content and hope" or "Increase level cap because that seems like a great idea and totally worked out in the past"?

[kanordog]

to be able to play with the elite

Never said elite, I said at cap, please don't put words in my mouth.

[ggmarquez]

You say about my facts...

the only fact i care about is the fact that DDO is still super fun. it didn't stop being fun the last time they raised the cap. or the time before that.
if all the players who left during a mass exodus had stuck around, they would have found level 30 is just as fun as level 20.
if anyone decides to quit because they raise the cap again, they'll miss out on all the fun a new level cap can provide.

[Chai]

What are some ways that they could make their business model more recruitment oriented?

Allow for easy returns to the game.

Modifying character build should be alot easier/less costly. Someone who has been away for a year or two likely is 1-2 meta changes out of date. Their awesome top of the meta build they played in 2018 is now a mid-tier oopsie-daisy.

Current trash tier loot should be a point or two less than previous BiS loot. Hardcore grinders will still farm BiS loot in any era and do it all over again in the next era. Those returning should be able to contribute in a short amount of time back.

[Weemadarthur]

the only fact i care about is the fact that DDO is still super fun. it didn't stop being fun the last time they raised the cap. or the time before that.
if all the players who left during a mass exodus had stuck around, they would have found level 30 is just as fun as level 20.
if anyone decides to quit because they raise the cap again, they'll miss out on all the fun a new level cap can provide.

The strange thing is when the cap went to 25 I cant remember a huge amount leaving but I can remember a lot of returning players. This is only anecdotal evidence to be sure and purely based on players I knew at the time but I really cant remember any mass exodus (I do remember a lot did leave however when the cap went to 30 and they increased the xp required to ETR. This once again though is just based on my personal experience so shouldn't be taken as fact).

[OrodelaSol]

Never said elite, I said at cap, please don't put words in my mouth.

ah semantics...love it...anyway, now you can play at a new and more exciting/challenging cap! yay! why is running at lvl 30 cap good n 40 bad? was 25 bad? was 28? but back to the main point, no one is forcing anyone to do anything they do not want to do. if you dont want to do it, dont. if u want to play at cap then you will want to lvl to cap. why is running at cap such a big deal anyway?

[Weemadarthur]

ah semantics...love it...anyway, now you can play at a new and more exciting/challenging cap! yay! why is running at lvl 30 cap good n 40 bad? was 25 bad? was 28? but back to the main point, no one is forcing anyone to do anything they do not want to do. if you dont want to do it, dont. if u want to play at cap then you will want to lvl to cap. why is running at cap such a big deal anyway?

To answer this question you have to look at how badly implemented cap raises have been historically. When the cap went to 25 we had 1 raid to run. That was it. There was no endgame. When the cap went to 28 we still had 1 raid to run which was now realistically viewed as a low level raid so still no end game. When the cap went to 30 we had 3 raids and it took over a year before there were a few more and end game finally started to be viable. Since then we have had on average a raid or 2 added every year. End game is now not only viable but has an assortment of raids that can be run regularly if you know enough players that have at least 1 nearly capped toon. It is finally in a good place.

With the level increase there is a very good chance seeing at how slowly new raids are released that this is very likely to happen again. Its all well and good to say SSG have learned from the mistakes of the past but until at least a little evidence shows that they have (which unfortunately is not the case atm) its generally safer to expect the worst as at least then you wont be disappointed. If SSG/Turbine had acknowledged that they had dealt badly with previous cap raises and announced a better path forward this time around it would go a long way to assuaging the concerns of a lot of players but as yet this has never happened. If SSG could give a rough plan to outline what they are hoping to achieve over the coming years a lot of players (even those who disagree) would accept this a lot better.

As it stands now though I feel the cap is being raised again less due to a grand scheme but more due to SSG having painted themselves into a corner with power creep and it being the easy path forward if they want to keep selling expansions with more power creep. I understand why they feel the need to raise the cap but that doesn't mean I have to like it or agree with it.

The bigger problem here though is despite the question being asked several times no-one as yet has been able to come up with an alternative that would also enable SSG to keep the lights on (an issue SSG may very well be struggling with themselves). I personally can think of a couple of short term solutions but they would only last a year or 2 tops and then we would be back in the exact same scenario.

[IndiannaKoukla]

The bigger problem here though is despite the question being asked several times no-one as yet has been able to come up with an alternative that would also enable SSG to keep the lights on (an issue SSG may very well be struggling with themselves). I personally can think of a couple of short term solutions but they would only last a year or 2 tops and then we would be back in the exact same scenario.

This does remain the unanswered question, one thing I do wonder is... where is their marketing? I'm not in the US so I'm not sure if there is more of it there however I have never ever seen any advertisements of this game and I have never run into anyone irl that even knew this game existed and were shocked that it did. Maybe some marketing to bring more attention to the game, in saying this though.. they have issues they need to iron out. Can't well have an influx of players and some of them selecting Thelanis where they can't even chat :\

At the end of the day the arguments get so heated here because we ALL love this game and we want it to succeed and remain in existence so fingers crossed some of these issues are rectified and the level cap remains on hold until they are fully ready for its release.

[Weemadarthur]

This does remain the unanswered question, one thing I do wonder is... where is their marketing? I'm not in the US so I'm not sure if there is more of it there however I have never ever seen any advertisements of this game and I have never run into anyone irl that even knew this game existed and were shocked that it did. Maybe some marketing to bring more attention to the game, in saying this though.. they have issues they need to iron out. Can't well have an influx of players and some of them selecting Thelanis where they can't even chat :\

At the end of the day the arguments get so heated here because we ALL love this game and we want it to succeed and remain in existence so fingers crossed some of these issues are rectified and the level cap remains on hold until they are fully ready for its release.

Without going into a history lesson the simple answer is there is no marketing for this game. This has been an issue since 2006 and shows no sign of change in the foreseeable future. It is a real shame that someone at SSG didn't at least pick up on the fact that with a little bit of advertising while they had their free content coupon running they could have had a potentially huge influx of players for minimal cost.

[IndiannaKoukla]

Without going into a history lesson the simple answer is there is no marketing for this game. This has been an issue since 2006 and shows no sign of change in the foreseeable future. It is a real shame that someone at SSG didn't at least pick up on the fact that with a little bit of advertising while they had their free content coupon running they could have had a potentially huge influx of players for minimal cost.

Sad but true, perhaps this is something they should do again in the future (even if it's just a month) and market it.. marketing costs money but it should be bringing in money to offset it

[Zakharov]

some people in this thread (and elsewhere) have advocated strongly for horizontal progression. something about paragon levels (or incremental advancement) where small bonus's can be earned gradually... over a long time. this instead of level cap increase. let me just point out, it would push alt play even further behind. raising the level cap has yet to actually kill off alts. but new sideways progression systems, similar to reaper trees, would be yet another nail in the coffin for the alt game.

when they raised the cap to 30, i leveled my alts to 30. before that i leveled them 28, and 25 still earlier. i never felt like my alts were too far behind until.... reaper trees and sideways progression. as soon as we got a taste of incremental advancement on a per character basis (reaper points) i saw my alts start to slip further and further from where i felt they should be. prior to reaper, the worst i had to face was a jaunt to cap, and then the crawl to acquire the gear they would need. usually in the form of raiding regularly.

now, it's more of a slow crawl to no finish-line and the only measuring stick is my main, who has 60 or 70 more reaper points than any of my alts.
if you really think paragon levels are the right way to provide advancement instead of a level cap increase, please consider... what exactly do you anticipate will happen to alt play? do you for-see account based paragon progression? i don't.

i firmly anticipate a cap-increase will provide less of an obstacle going forward, than any new "horizontal" systems. and will not relegate alt play to the very back of the bus, even as it keeps being asked to get up and slide one row back, every year or so.

First, I think alt support is basically a function of:

How much total potential power gain is available for a single character
How long does it take to optimize or max out the available power
What is the power difference between fully optimized/maxed out character vs first life character


Making alt play viable needs to address these somehow and I agree that reaper trees made things worse for alts. I don't remember the people who asked for higher difficulty level also asking for more power, the posts at the time were mostly people asking for cosmetic rewards or very small bonuses, but they just had to add even more power creep.

However, I think you are misguided if you think raising the lvl cap will make horizontal progression less likely. New systems like reaper could be added whether the base character lvl increases or not. We don't have SSG numbers, but I'd guess the most likely choice won't be "new system" or "lvl increase" but "new system" or "new system + lvl increase". If so, alt play will be less attractive regardless.



If the Feywild loot isn't worth replacing Sharn loot then I have greatly reduced interest in purchasing the expansion, which is exactly what SSG wants to avoid. So of course it's going to invalidate most or possibly all of the Sharn loot. Just look at past expansions as evidence.

There is no need to make all loot in new content replace all loot in old content. If anything that has the opposite affect for some of us - knowing that the next batch of loot will make the current batch of loot obsolete in a few months greatly reduces my interest in purchasing anything. Why pay for something you know will be obsolete in a few months? They have plenty of room to add interesting loot that does not replace but augments existing loot.

Plus I'd consider it very boring if you know the new loot will always be better. I think it's much more interesting if every piece of loot presents a difficult choice to equip or not.




Originally Posted by Firebreed
3) Besides destroying the raiding scene (which exists whether you like it or not), raising the level cap does the following:
- 3a) Causes people's current end-game item builds to become obsolete and increases gear tetris, which is hated by many (by not raising the cap there are ways to avoid this, whereas raising it guarantees it)
- 3b) Adds substantially more power (-creep) to the game (raising the level cap VS adding a system that supports alts/creating items that fill holes or enable builds/adding sideways progression at cap that offers small rewards)

Let me correct somethings:
3: Raiding scene will always be there,
3a) happens every update
3b) happens every update


Ok so Firebreed probably shouldn't have presented these as facts, but you are also just presenting your opinion. Here is my opinion:

3: For me, the raid scene was almost completely destroyed by Underdark and has never fully recovered.
So while unlikely, the devs could increase the lvl cap in a way that does effectively destroy raiding. They have said repeatedly they are aware of the issues and will do their best to avoid that, but it happened before so many of us are skeptical.
3a) I assume you mean "every update where the lvl cap is increased" and not actually "every update"
3b) I assume you mean "every update where the lvl cap is increased" and not actually "every update"

And just because those things happened before, doesn't make them good or desirable. For some people they make the game worse.



More power creep in gear could be just as well required to meet the new requirements of a possibly new difficulty above the current legendary content.

They could still add considerable new difficulty without any new power creep and people will still beat it, in fact many would love that!



i understand that feeling all too well... i still have 16 friends in my friends list that haven't logged in for over 8 years. some of them i miss quite a bit. but i also understand, leaving the level cap at 30 for another year won't bring any of them back. it just won't. we either let it go and move on, continuing to enjoy the game and remembering to spill one for the brothers we've lost along the way... or we cop out and pretend maybe this time it will be different. it won't. they will raise the level cap because it's part of the bigger picture, and we can chose to be hopeful about what that means, or cop out and decide prematurely that it can't be good for the game.

Keeping the lvl cap may not bring anyone back, but it could keep some from leaving. I want to keep as many people as possible and am worried that raising the lvl cap will drive people away more than almost any other change they could make.



http://ddoracle.com/images/MotU_one_year_later.jpg
That starts at 2012.
17500 logins daily before MotU
25000 logins daily at MotU.
15000 logins daily a year after MotU. (less than before MotU).
http://ddoracle.com/images/serverLoadQuarterly.big.png
This is from last quarter.
6000 logins daily.
Keep in mind that those logins are with the population boost provided by the pandemic and the free-to-play deal.


This is great, thanks! We can't give accurate feedback without data.



Reading this thread is sad. Its like some people cant imagine how DDO can have an expansion that adds something new without it being more powercreep loot.

How about instead of rushing a new expansion out, they fix bugs and revamp obsolete stuff?

Almost all buffs/debuffs are obsolete with the power creep. If keeping buffs up and dispelling enemy buffs were important like in D&D, that would be an extra element of gameplay rather than just "spam AOE CC + damage + instant kills LMAO". Make combat more tactical rather than just having a caster delete an entire encounter with meteor. Even in high reaper, the zergfest just looks silly, AOE CC -> AOE spam -> couple of instant kills -> zerg zerg zerg. It looks NOTHING like how a D&D adventure should be at all.

What if vanguards were a viable playstyle useful from 1-30? Their role could be that of CC/debuffer. They would do less direct damage but enable the party to deal more. Their current role is "newbies who try to play it hate it" (no, a tank build that just blocks in KT isn't a vanguard build).

Tons of old content and mechanics that could be revamped. TR cache, finding a way to get most players on the same server, more bank slots, fixing obsolete loot, fixing the outdated scaling in level 20 quests, add quest teleports to old wilderness (nobody enjoys running to chains of flames), etc...instead of pushing out new loot that people are struggling to find space for. Sharn is ridiculous, all these BTC artifacts that you NEED to keep around and it just clogs up your TR cache because you cant move it to alts. Its so stupid.

There are so many things you could do that doesn't REQUIRE "more loot with bigger numbers". Come on, THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX!

Agreed - more tactical play please!



so the only acceptable timetable for level cap increase is when it coincides with a player-base growth of, what 1000%? yeah. good luck with that. :wink:

Well I just used x10 as a guess but let's do some napkin math.. based on ddooracle data referenced by Faltout, the game population is currently about 1/3 what it was just before Underdark when the lvl cap was 20. So to support a similar spread of players across 40 levels you would need x6 more players.. but wait! There was no Reaper system at that time, which further spreads players out even at the same lvl. That would seem to roughly double the potential spread, so now we are at x12. This does not even account for epic quests at that time having only 1 difficulty level which makes the current spread even worse.

So my original guess was low but not too far off. Yes, to support grouping across 40 levels to the same degree that grouping was supported across 20 levels pre-Underdark, we would need at least x10 the current population. No, I don't expect that to happen which is one reason I'm against a lvl cap increase. Now, a mega-merged-server or cross server grouping could get us to something similar, maybe about the equivalent of x7 or x8. That would be amazing, but even then we would not quite get to pre-Underdark levels.




no, a permanent level cap is just a bad idea, unless you are trying to up-sell character slots and back space. once all players have max bank toons with all available inventory purchased, then what? sorry we are still pushing out level 29 gear... nothing doing. just gotta start ditching the old 29 gear. which was released on top of the older 29 gear. which invalidated the even older 29 gear. going back a decade. :wink:


New loot of the same level does not have to invalidate current loot - it can expand and augment choices. As I said above, I think it's much more interesting if every piece of loot presents a difficult choice to equip or not. Also, I think something is wrong with your eye - you may want to see a doctor.




looking ahead to level 40 and perhaps a demi-god system? sounds pretty rad.

We are basically already demi-gods, so congrats I guess? Once again - they could add a new destiny system, or new demi-god system, or both with hundreds of new demi-god levels or trees or spheres or past lives.. without ever raising the lvl cap. You can have all the infinite cosmic power you desire without your base character lvl going up!!



At least according to the DDO audit posted in this thread, the game's population increased significantly this year in correlation to all of the content being Free to Play.

When your first "fact" turns out not to be true, it makes me disinclined to regard the rest of your "facts" as such. Perhaps we'd all be better off acknowledging that we're posting opinions, unless we have some sort of official documentation to support assertions of fact.

While people could phrase their claims better, please see post from Faltout above - population has clearly declined over the years.

[KoobTheProud]

Without going into a history lesson the simple answer is there is no marketing for this game. This has been an issue since 2006 and shows no sign of change in the foreseeable future. It is a real shame that someone at SSG didn't at least pick up on the fact that with a little bit of advertising while they had their free content coupon running they could have had a potentially huge influx of players for minimal cost.

None of us really knows what the economic basis of the game is at this point. You're correct that a well-designed marketing campaign might have brought in a huge influx of players during the really F2P period. However we don't know if many of those players would have stayed after a cursory glance at the game or when the F2P was switched off.

One of the things about DDO that has always been true since ED's were released is that it is a hard climb for a new player. The game itself is not particularly simple with all sorts of corner cases in most of the systems that tend to trip people up the first few times they run into one of the cases. The power of vets is extreme compared to new players because there are no resets in the game and power just accrues endlessly over time. The thing that is most out of whack though is that DDO really bears very little resemblance to D&D. Having super heroes running around all over the place is not a D&D phenomenon that most people recognize as genuine. It's more a City of Heroes type meta and as new players tumble to all of the above the attrition rate is high.

Now, having said that, there is a type of player for whom DDO is really irresistible and that is the player who has endless time to spend on the game. If you can play 8/7 then you have a chance to climb up the ranks and become one of the super heroes yourself and that does appeal to some people. So a few newbies stick and after awhile they become part of the conundrum of DDO: players who want the privileges they have earned over time even if it means the overall game remains an impenetrable venue for 99% of the players who might otherwise play it.

[DocHawkeye]

All marketing is not SSG's bailiwick. They've said that enough times. As a studio who goes through a publisher, it falls to the publisher to promote the game. If you're mad at the lack of advertisment for the game, blame Daybreak, not SSG.

But I doubt you'll have much luck with them.

[nokowi]

None of us really knows what the economic basis of the game is at this point. You're correct that a well-designed marketing campaign might have brought in a huge influx of players during the really F2P period. However we don't know if many of those players would have stayed after a cursory glance at the game or when the F2P was switched off.

One of the things about DDO that has always been true since ED's were released is that it is a hard climb for a new player. The game itself is not particularly simple with all sorts of corner cases in most of the systems that tend to trip people up the first few times they run into one of the cases. The power of vets is extreme compared to new players because there are no resets in the game and power just accrues endlessly over time. The thing that is most out of whack though is that DDO really bears very little resemblance to D&D. Having super heroes running around all over the place is not a D&D phenomenon that most people recognize as genuine. It's more a City of Heroes type meta and as new players tumble to all of the above the attrition rate is high.

Now, having said that, there is a type of player for whom DDO is really irresistible and that is the player who has endless time to spend on the game. If you can play 8/7 then you have a chance to climb up the ranks and become one of the super heroes yourself and that does appeal to some people. So a few newbies stick and after awhile they become part of the conundrum of DDO: players who want the privileges they have earned over time even if it means the overall game remains an impenetrable venue for 99% of the players who might otherwise play it.

I think we can conclude based on the lack of marketing that the player retention rate is pretty low, as a company like Daybreak that is in for the profit is likely to do what generates the most profit.

Consider what happens when a new players comes here, absolutely any suggestion will be met with
1. they are bad players
2. they are playing wrong
3. trust me I can run R10 with one hand tied behind my back
4. get good!

You can almost guarantee nobody will simply listen to their words.


I have 86 past lives and 10,000 hours of play, and the game design is a real turn off for me to return to frequent play, even with years of game knowledge and those power benefits, even with people in-game to help me out.

I don't want to be power leveled by others, and that is all DDO really offers these days. The game design pushes rewards per time, and playing the game in any way that is interesting and interactive and not the meta power group play puts a 3000 lb weight on your back.

I think even some of the super casual are eventually figuring out that SSG designers left them in the dust a long time ago.

[ggmarquez]

First, I think alt support is basically a function of:

How much total potential power gain is available for a single character
How long does it take to optimize or max out the available power
What is the power difference between fully optimized/maxed out character vs first life character


Making alt play viable needs to address these somehow and I agree that reaper trees made things worse for alts. I don't remember the people who asked for higher difficulty level also asking for more power, the posts at the time were mostly people asking for cosmetic rewards or very small bonuses, but they just had to add even more power creep.

However, I think you are misguided if you think raising the lvl cap will make horizontal progression less likely. New systems like reaper could be added whether the base character lvl increases or not. We don't have SSG numbers, but I'd guess the most likely choice won't be "new system" or "lvl increase" but "new system" or "new system + lvl increase". If so, alt play will be less attractive regardless.

so let's just keep the level cap right where it is, where it has been for 3 expansions already. let's keep piling on even more content at this level and keep adding expansions which only offer more gear-tetris and the need for 2 more bank toons for each ex-pac. why? because maybe "new systems like reaper could be added whether the level increases or not." hmm. nah. noty. if alt play is less attractive regardless, i'll take my chances with an increased cap which has less time commitment per alt, rather than a level plateau which will eventually require the addition of those sideways progression systems that have a profound and negative impact on alt play.


There is no need to make all loot in new content replace all loot in old content. If anything that has the opposite affect for some of us - knowing that the next batch of loot will make the current batch of loot obsolete in a few months greatly reduces my interest in purchasing anything. Why pay for something you know will be obsolete in a few months? They have plenty of room to add interesting loot that does not replace but augments existing loot.

Plus I'd consider it very boring if you know the new loot will always be better. I think it's much more interesting if every piece of loot presents a difficult choice to equip or not.
sure. i think the same way. but.
there's never any way to tell what will be invalidated and what will last a decade.
ever.
i spent about 6 months or so farming for a Dusk for one of my warlocks. when i finally got it, i slapped a sentient gem in that sucker and began feeding it. i would say i got 8 or 9 months of use from that particular raid weapon before sharn was announced and a cloak made Dusk obsolete. now my warlocks all wear Hallowed Trail. but.
there are still a large assortment of weapons and raid gear that have not been completely invalidated. so.
what does it matter to me if the level cap stays the same or they raise it.
if i have no way of knowing what will be invalidated, might as well ask for a cap increase. then maybe my Dusk gets used for a level or two. my Hallowed Trail gets used for a level or two. and the next new thing gets used for cap. makes sense to me.


They could still add considerable new difficulty without any new power creep and people will still beat it, in fact many would love that!

they sure could. they sure would. and i would give them a 21 skull reaper salute. but if they don't offer new weapons which offer even a slight advantage over the old ones, i'm not going to look at them. i'm already thinking i'll skip the legendary LOB and MA raids all together. i might run VOD. maybe.


Keeping the lvl cap may not bring anyone back, but it could keep some from leaving. I want to keep as many people as possible and am worried that raising the lvl cap will drive people away more than almost any other change they could make.

that's a valid concern. i'm worried that the people who leave over level cap increases, would have left after a while anyway. some people just get burned out on the grind. they couch the complaints in terms like "LEvL CAp ShoULd NeveR1!1!! go up" before they quit. and then they quit because they found something else to play. they quit because their friends quit. they quit because life circumstances. but all we hear is the complaint they made before quitting, which is usually just parroting something someone told them one time, and it was catchy and stuck.
"Level cap increase will kill the game..." or "If they raise the cap again i'll quit right now." some very dramatic statements from some drama department despots attempting to hold the company hostage with the old "i won't pay unless you do what i say" routine.


Well I just used x10 as a guess but let's do some napkin math.. based on ddooracle data referenced by Faltout, the game population is currently about 1/3 what it was just before Underdark when the lvl cap was 20. So to support a similar spread of players across 40 levels you would need x6 more players.. but wait! There was no Reaper system at that time, which further spreads players out even at the same lvl. That would seem to roughly double the potential spread, so now we are at x12. This does not even account for epic quests at that time having only 1 difficulty level which makes the current spread even worse.
yep. populations trend down over time. even while the species is growing, old games are dying and new ones are being developed. even as we speak, someone will have left to play another game. someone will have unistalled DDO, possibly not even for the first time, due to frustration. and someone will have just learned ddo exists and may even decide to give it a try. we won't see a population like we did pre-motu. ever again i'm afraid. but that can't be used as an excuse to justify the whims of any one, or even the majority, of the player base. the only real say we have is this : will i continue to play, will i continue to pay, or won't i? and my answer is yes! your answer may become a no, if the level cap does increase. i would be sorry to hear that. but i would still continue to play. soldier on, as it were.


So my original guess was low but not too far off. Yes, to support grouping across 40 levels to the same degree that grouping was supported across 20 levels pre-Underdark, we would need at least x10 the current population. No, I don't expect that to happen which is one reason I'm against a lvl cap increase. Now, a mega-merged-server or cross server grouping could get us to something similar, maybe about the equivalent of x7 or x8. That would be amazing, but even then we would not quite get to pre-Underdark levels .

yeah, we don't need pre-motu populations to play and have fun. it's a great idea, and i wouldn't say no to cross-server grouping, or a megaserver or whatever. but i play and have fun right now, even without 10x the population. and for some reason, it just doesn't stop entertaining me, even when i'm solo, or in a short-man raid. i really do feel for you and anyone else whose fun is tied directly to the number of people online at the same time as you. it's only going to get worse. after the covid influx, you'll start to see the numbers dwindle back down again. and if you can't have fun without them, yeah those people leaving does pose a very real problem.


New loot of the same level does not have to invalidate current loot - it can expand and augment choices. As I said above, I think it's much more interesting if every piece of loot presents a difficult choice to equip or not. Also, I think something is wrong with your eye - you may want to see a doctor.
cute. guess you got me there. :wink:


We are basically already demi-gods, so congrats I guess? Once again - they could add a new destiny system, or new demi-god system, or both with hundreds of new demi-god levels or trees or spheres or past lives.. without ever raising the lvl cap. You can have all the infinite cosmic power you desire without your base character lvl going up!!

sure. that's true. we are already demigods. i can pretty much cast greater teleport at will (with high enough umd) i speak every language (i mean it's all english right?) i'm basically immortal. etc. etc.
and yeah, they could give us some tree's to spend some points in which might make it feel more like we are being raised to the level of demigod as we progress. sure. but if it's not connected to a cap increase... it will cause some pretty serious issues. just for starters : why wasn't i a demigod the last time i fought against strahd? strahd is still the same puny little thing, no better than a henchman for a demigod like me, but just an update ago i was not a demigod and strahd was actually superior to me... etc.etc.



While people could phrase their claims better, please see post from Faltout above - population has clearly declined over the years.
which is, again, a hard fact that all online games have to come to terms with. you won't get 100k new players a year. it's a shame, but you either deal and move forward... or?

[KoobTheProud]

I don't want to be power leveled by others, and that is all DDO really offers these days. The game design pushes rewards per time, and playing the game in any way that is interesting and interactive and not the meta power group play puts a 3000 lb weight on your back.

I think even some of the super casual are eventually figuring out that SSG designers left them in the dust a long time ago.

I think it escapes the developers notice that all but a small minority of the current player base really needs to get carried through what passes for current content. The process is not fun and it does not really catch the people being carried up that much - they'll still need to get carried through hundreds of hours of content more before they are up to speed.

For a new player this is not an issue initially, because they just run newbie stuff at normal and enjoy the game when it is not lagging. But every newbie has to emerge from the shell eventually and what they emerge into is fun hell. There's no fun in getting carried through the content most players are playing, even if those players do so with grace and good humor.

This is the primary conundrum that keeps DDO a small niche game with few strong adherents over time.

[SoulDustar]

I think we can conclude based on the lack of marketing that the player retention rate is pretty low, as a company like Daybreak that is in for the profit is likely to do what generates the most profit.

Consider what happens when a new players comes here, absolutely any suggestion will be met with
1. they are bad players
2. they are playing wrong
3. trust me I can run R10 with one hand tied behind my back
4. get good!

You can almost guarantee nobody will simply listen to their words.


I have 86 past lives and 10,000 hours of play, and the game design is a real turn off for me to return to frequent play, even with years of game knowledge and those power benefits, even with people in-game to help me out.

I don't want to be power leveled by others, and that is all DDO really offers these days. The game design pushes rewards per time, and playing the game in any way that is interesting and interactive and not the meta power group play puts a 3000 lb weight on your back.

I think even some of the super casual are eventually figuring out that SSG designers left them in the dust a long time ago.

I recently returned using the free quest coupon to gain access to content I had never run before except when someone gave me a pass. Which did happen on a few occasions.

1. I was definitely a bad player looking back.

I was not capable of running EE let alone reaper, EH was a struggle most times.

2. I was definitely playing wrong.

grabbing aggro before letting the tank established aggro after a couple of delayed raises I learned, needlessly kiting mobs when it was not necessary since we had a divine that would heal us, and that is just two on a long list.
When I changed my bad habits my enjoyment of the game and grouping went up vastly and no more delayed raises.

3. I definitely cannot run R10 with one had behind my back.

I'm good with that.

4. I am definitely better than I was but did I get good not so sure.

I think now I understand my role in a group much better and can hopefully only get better from here on out.

Until I started listening to players that were way better than me all of those things were true and more. Some people sugar coat it some don't. The first thing I learned was to check my ego at the door my ego got bruised a few times along the way but I learned.

I have 6 past lives and do just fine up to R4 ( not raids mind you ) after R4 I do not feel as capable that may or may not have anything to do with past lives and will hopefully improve over time without them. I started listening and doing what I was expected to do and contributing the party in a meaning way. It was explained to me like this, there is no I in team but there is an M and E and if you want it to be about me me me me then get lost and good luck, I chose to listen and find my place within groups, I fit in just fine now.

Now you have 86 past lives which is at this point is around 65% of all past lives and you say to you don't want to be power leveled by other players, our experiences must be vastly different in a lot of ways and doesn't make much sense to me. Shouldn't you be the one carrying the party from what I have seen on the forums and sometimes heard in the game with how much power comes from past lives supposedly gives even tho that has not really been my experience at all. I can carry a party thru R1, I can make R4 much easier after that it's a gamble I won't take unless I know the party very well.

I play about 4 hours a day twice a week does that make me casual. I don't feel any pressure at all to get a bunch of past lives I don't really need.

Level cap increases are doubtful to change anything for me, in fact it may ensure that I don't need any more past lives at all.

I am doubtful my grouping experience will change at all since I no longer identify myself as a bad player with bad habits, and a bad attitude. I think this is why my grouping experience suffered the most.

[nokowi]

Now you have 86 past lives which is at this point is around 65% of all past lives and you say to you don't want to be power leveled by other players, our experiences must be vastly different in a lot of ways and doesn't make much sense to me. Shouldn't you be the one carrying the party from what I have seen on the forums and sometimes heard in the game with how much power comes from past lives supposedly gives even tho that has not really been my experience at all. I can carry a party thru R1, I can make R4 much easier after that it's a gamble I won't take unless I know the party very well.

I've never seen a single target build without much cc and poor self healing power a group through content - you need AoE to do that. I play an unsupported play style, which is using tactics and paying attention to the abilities of single mobs in melee range, not AoEing helpless and cc'd mobs without respect to their abilities, at full run speed.

You are playing low reaper with other people that have character power far beyond that of the content they are playing - of course they are succeeding.



I play about 4 hours a day twice a week does that make me casual. I don't feel any pressure at all to get a bunch of past lives I don't really need.

You are a casual player until you figure out what this game sells, which is meta play, full run speed, max rewards per time. Once you know all the quests (give it a half year), you will find out that gameplay is very static and that the meta is not interesting play and good group experience, but max rewards per time at the expense of play enjoyment. If you value good group experience, you will find most of the population that remains beyond the exploration phase of the game adapts to the meta, and these are the only groups offered. Those that don't adapt become solo players, and get left behind as SSG designs content around the top 5% of players earning rewards at full run speed, probably at 20x the rate you are earning them.

What challenges you now will quickly disappear. The content is static, and SSG has not built group play in a way to provide long term variety through character actions. I'm interested in decisions I make during play, and they don't exist in any meaningful way beyond the exploration phase where you are learning the content. DDO used to have more meaningful play decisions and more cooperative interactions, but SSG has gone all in on their being only one way to play their game, which a group of people playing their own game within a group, without respect to what others are doing, competing for which build is the most ridiculously OP relative to content - who is the best spreadsheet character designer, with the main attributes being purchasing latest release and exploiting known bugs (some ability procing twice, something scaling incorrectly, etc).

You will eventually find that people at your preferred difficulty level only stay in groups that go at full run speed. Anything less, and they join for one quest and leave for greener pastures.




I am doubtful my grouping experience will change at all since I no longer identify myself as a bad player with bad habits, and a bad attitude. I think this is why my grouping experience suffered the most.

I'm a very skilled player with good habits and a great attitude (while playing the game). I just don't enjoy what SSG has decided to design and sell, which for someone that gets beyond being a casual player is running through dungeons at full run speed hitting the same couple buttons in the same order until your eyes bleed. That's what groups have to offer at my level of play - a bunch of people always on the easiest builds zerging through content without respect to the content and largely without respect to what actions other players are taking.

[SoulDustar]

I've never seen a single target build without much cc and poor self healing power a group through content - you need AoE to do that. I play an unsupported play style, which is using tactics and paying attention to the abilities of single mobs in melee range, not AoEing helpless and cc'd mobs without respect to their abilities, at full run speed.

You are playing low reaper with other people that have character power far beyond that of the content they are playing - of course they are succeeding.

We have rogue who can assassinate and toss out the occasional cocoon not as good as a healer but it works, when mobs have true seeing he can do less but they still manage to pop off a few assassinates when possible by using our aggro, we don't ask them to run up and tank a reaper or anything but they contribute just fine. I never try to heal myself in reaper we share out heals with the party and all of us watch out for each other.

I don't play with anyone that has hundreds of past lives done and hundreds of reaper points, we have aoe sometimes, cc sometimes but even when it is not available we simply adapt to the current situation as needed. We don't lower our expectations we rise to the challenge.



You are a casual player until you figure out what this game sells, which is meta play, full run speed, max rewards per time. Once you know all the quests (give it a half year), you will find out that gameplay is very static and that the meta is not interesting play and good group experience, but max rewards per time at the expense of play enjoyment. If you value good group experience, you will find most of the population that remains beyond the exploration phase of the game adapts to the meta, and these are the only groups offered. Those that don't adapt become solo players, and get left behind as SSG designs content around the top 5% of players earning rewards at full run speed, probably at 20x the rate you are earning them.

I'm not sure how what anyone else is doing in the game can really hurt me. I'll just leave group and go play the way I want and enjoy myself or find a group that fits better. I joined a role playing group once that was enough of that lets act this out lets act that out that's a bit much for my limited play time.

All games are static that have no real player vs player interaction the mobs spawn in the same locations, suffer from predictable AI even in new content. I managed to find a group that hangs out together and plays together regularly some reincarnate some don't but they have alts they will log to when the group is on and then go back to their other when time allows.



What challenges you now will quickly disappear. The content is static, and SSG has not built group play in a way to provide long term variety through character actions. I'm interested in decisions I make during play, and they don't exist in any meaningful way beyond the exploration phase where you are learning the content.

You will eventually find that people at your preferred difficulty level only stay groups that go at full run speed. Anything less, and they join for one quest and leave for greener pastures.

I still have 6 more levels of reaper in front of me before any challenge disappears and a level cap at some point from what I can see.

I don't see how someone joining group and then leaving for another is going to harm my experience at all if they aren't having fun then they should leave. They could just as likely have to leave for work, take a phone call, or something else entirely.



I'm a very skilled player with good habits and a great attitude (while playing the game). I just don't enjoy what SSG has decided to design and sell, which for someone that gets beyond being a casual player is running through dungeons at full run speed hitting the same couple buttons in the same order until your eyes bleed. That's what groups have to offer at my level of play - a bunch of people always on the easiest builds zerging through content without respect to the content.

If this is so then why are you here, you must no longer be heavily invested in the game why not find something that you do get more enjoyment there are more games out there. That sounds about as appealing as going out with my ex.

regardless good luck

[nokowi]

We have rogue who can assassinate and toss out the occasional cocoon not as good as a healer but it works, when mobs have true seeing he can do less but they still manage to pop off a few assassinates when possible by using our aggro, we don't ask them to run up and tank a reaper or anything but they contribute just fine. I never try to heal myself in reaper we share out heals with the party and all of us watch out for each other.

I don't play with anyone that has hundreds of past lives done and hundreds of reaper points, we have aoe sometimes, cc sometimes but even when it is not available we simply adapt to the current situation as needed. We don't lower our expectations we rise to the challenge.

For me, the question is not whether it can be done, but whether it is interesting and engaging. 10,000 hours into the game it's pretty easy to throw out a cocoon. I need something that competes with other decisions, like the agro system they had in the past. The stealth/agro game has gone towards less and less decision making, and I am asking for more decision making.




I'm not sure how what anyone else is doing in the game can really hurt me. I'll just leave group and go play the way I want and enjoy myself or find a group that fits better. I joined a role playing group once that was enough of that lets act this out lets act that out that's a bit much for my limited play time.

As you get better, those other groups don't exist. The crowd you are in now will be inappropriate if you gain power, lives, quest knowledge, and better builds. People complain if I am too effective in your groups, and it doesn't present a challenge to me. The decisions are trivial, like I said earlier.

Your best bet is that you are so casual that you never really improve. I think there is a place for that type of player to group. If you become skilled, you get pushed into the meta-crowd. If you start to want more rewards, you also get pushed into the meta crowd. There is not a place for skilled play without meta players - almost all those that remain start ignoring content and chasing max rewards on easiest build.




All games are static that have no real player vs player interaction the mobs spawn in the same locations, suffer from predictable AI even in new content. I managed to find a group that hangs out together and plays together regularly some reincarnate some don't but they have alts they will log to when the group is on and then go back to their other when time allows.

DDO did not have static play for my build in the past. I could take the same character as your friend and have 50% to 100% better performance due to better decision making. That decision making no longer exists. It likely does not exist on your build, it was something unique to assassins using tactical play. Claiming something I have played for 10,000 hours is not possible is going to look silly to someone who has played tactically in DDO for 10,000 hours. The challenge was in predicting what other players would do 6 seconds in advance, having a penalty for getting detected, and having competitive play decisions on whether or not to enter or leave stealth. These no longer exist. The angry bees agro makes prediction trivial, and there is no penalty for being detected, as assassinate no longer requires non-detection.

I'm curious how you know better than me, with such limited experience.



I don't see how someone joining group and then leaving for another is going to harm my experience at all if they aren't having fun then they should leave. They could just as likely have to leave for work, take a phone call, or something else entirely.

It becomes a problem when you want to group, but all the groups are full zerg speed til their eyes bleed. Of course you don't see it as a problem, it is not affecting you right now, and you can't imagine anything other than your own experience, or the present game. You will tell me my experience is wrong, even though you haven't yet experienced what I am talking about. I prefer 70% solo and 30% group, and DDO provides a poor experience for both for my preferences.




If this is so then why are you here, you must no longer be heavily invested in the game why not find something that you do get more enjoyment there are more games out there. That sounds about as appealing as going out with my ex.

Amazingly I have about 8 hours of free time in a day, and I don't mind spending 20 minutes here. It makes more sense for me to be here than you, if you are enjoying the game. You probably think DDO design is completely static, but it swings around wildly with each new system. They could incorporate play preferences into their game if they wanted to, just like they did in the past. It makes sense for people to make suggestions to improve the player population, despite the "get off my lawn" suggestions given here.

The game you like now wasn't here 3 years ago - it was much different. The game you like now won't be here in 3 more - it will be different. I like to give suggestions to make the next system better, even though few here can understand any design other than what they see now.

Anyway, go enjoy the game, and don't spend times on the forums telling other people their preferences are wrong. I am very likely to be right about you in 2-3 years, so feel free to check back in and tell me that I was wrong about you. I do hope that I am wrong, and that your feelings about the game won't change.

[Zakharov]

... i really do feel for you and anyone else whose fun is tied directly to the number of people online at the same time as you. it's only going to get worse. after the covid influx, you'll start to see the numbers dwindle back down again. and if you can't have fun without them, yeah those people leaving does pose a very real problem.

I think the above summed it up pretty well. While other things are also factors, my fun is directly tied to the number of players available to group with. I'm trying to bring new players in and keep current ones, but SSG does not make it easy. The first month of HC S1 was the most fun I've had playing this game in years, thanks much more to the huge number of players than the HC aspect itself.

Other games that suffer dwindling populations also go through system changes to support bringing new players up to speed or making alt play easier as lvls increase. Those may not work for DDO, but there has got to be a better system than we have now. Hopefully SSG thinks of something.