Merge server

[MasterDragonan]

Please give us a fat bonus and merge servers. The current population is just terrible. It is like you are playing a single-player game.

[fatherpirate]

likely never happen.

They say there are Server side issues.
that is a pile of dung.

The real issue is their extremely out of date custom game engine.
It has reached it's limit and they are just trying squeeze out as much money as they can
out of the game before they hit a content wall.

When the game hits the content wall (the game can not be expanded and
keep the game running remotely stable) They will pull the
plug the next day. As old as the game engine is, there will be content limits.
Also keep in mind, the folks that wrote the original engine are long gone from DDO.


Would they replace it with Dungeons and Dragons 2 (with a new industry standard game engine)
who knows? would be nice.

When will they hit the content wall ? who knows, might be next month, could be years or more away.
But you will know when they hit it.

" We Regret to inform our loyal Player Base .... yadda yadda yadda"

[Oxarhamar]

likely never happen.

They say there are Server side issues.
that is a pile of dung.

The real issue is their extremely out of date custom game engine.
It has reached it's limit and they are just trying squeeze out as much money as they can
out of the game before they hit a content wall.

When the game hits the content wall (the game can not be expanded and
keep the game running remotely stable) They will pull the
plug the next day. As old as the game engine is, there will be content limits.
Also keep in mind, the folks that wrote the original engine are long gone from DDO.


Would they replace it with Dungeons and Dragons 2 (with a new industry standard game engine)
who knows? would be nice.

When will they hit the content wall ? who knows, might be next month, could be years or more away.
But you will know when they hit it.

" We Regret to inform our loyal Player Base .... yadda yadda yadda"

You are guessing

Cross server or mega server can work using the existing servers as home loading zones for play with a shared instance for groups

What need be done to get there that's not something you have information about

The game is now owed by EG7 and they don't like to let games die they let the keep going Undead as long as possible

[Wizard1406]

Yes we need cross server instances or mega server.

Until then, I would suggest breaking some barriers to grouping down, even if it makes xp slightly easier to get.

Heroic has low pop, increase power leveling range, increase bravery and overlevel range (ex. up +4 for full xp like epics, 5 levels party range instead of 3)

Make all quests possible to reddoor, include teleport to quest if someone is already inside ("hmmmm.... a group for Army of Shadow, but I can't be bothered to run through Lag-Loon, NAH, I won't join)

Make quests worth running in a group even if you already got your bravery and first time bonus. (group xp bonus when using LFM maybe?)

[Oxarhamar]

Yes we need cross server instances or mega server.

Until then, I would suggest breaking some barriers to grouping down, even if it makes xp slightly easier to get.

Heroic has low pop, increase power leveling range, increase bravery and overlevel range (ex. up +4 for full xp like epics, 5 levels party range instead of 3)

Make all quests possible to reddoor, include teleport to quest if someone is already inside ("hmmmm.... a group for Army of Shadow, but I can't be bothered to run through Lag-Loon, NAH, I won't join)

Make quests worth running in a group even if you already got your bravery and first time bonus. (group xp bonus when using LFM maybe?)

Grouping bonus like buddy bonus per character should be on at all times & not just on random weekends

Yeah fast teleport to an IP quest would be a great help running to a quest trying to get before it finishes it just silly if you don't have the path memorized you might need to pull up maps on wiki good luck getting in

Reddoor absolutely can't stand quests like zsharn lockout Flag (flagging for a raid is fine but quest Flagg just reduces grouping)

All solid ideas

[Logicman69]

Ever play on Hardcore and see the extreme lag fest there? That is what you would get with a mega-server. Sure, the population would be huge. Korthos looks like Grand Central Station, and you actually have to scroll on the LFM window.. but the performance with just tank. Think the worst lag you have seen on your server ever, happening about every 5 minutes.

I think people expect that if a megaserver is created, than all the resources that were used to power the other servers would be combined to run the mega server. I just don't think that is going to happen.

My thought would be instead of one mega server, what about just consolidating the existing servers. Take the 4 most populated servers and move people to those. Free transfers, free character renames, and a special renown token equivalent to 1/2 the renown earned for their current guild, and the guild leader gets a special redemption coupon for the equivalent ship that they had. This way guilds don't have to completely start over from scratch.

I'm playing on G-land and don't really have a problem with finding or getting groups. Sure, its slow during hardcore, but that is expected.

[mikarddo]

Low population offers some annoying dilemmas.

With low pop you pretty much have to make people more able to solo / short man, or they wont be able to play.
But with an increased ability to solo / short man you also get less reason to actually group up - and thus the low pop is further made worse by those playing posting groups less often.

Obviously, the fact that people are spread out in levesl (1-30) and power (hard to R10) makes successfully grouping up a difficulty exercise. The level issue could somewhat be helped with the use of alts, except that the game has gone in a direction where many players (far from all, but many) focus mostly or solely on a single character due to the bulk of single character progression available.

Aside from cross-server grouping which would be great I would like to offer another idea to improve on grouping.

Suggestion:
At any time you can make a "clone" of your character. You need a free character slot to do so. Any character can only have one clone, delete it before making a new one.
- The clone gets the exact same build as the original including hotkey bars, EDs, Feats, flaggins, favor etc.
- The clone gets a copy of the worn gear and the gear in inventory but not the gear in the bank nor the gear in the TR cache (so move the gear you to the char before you clone it). All the gear on the clone is flagged "clone" and cannot be sold, traded or used in any kind of turnin.
- The clone and the original divide the money the original had (not really important as money isnt important but still).
- Any reaper xp earned by the clone is added to the orginal not to the clone.
- The clone does not earn regular xp.
- The clone cannot TR, ETR, ITR or LR.
- The clone and the original share raid timers.
- Any new gear the clone gets is treated as normal gear and may be BtA or unbound.
Add for free to VIP with a cost for Premiums.

Why does this help grouping you may ask? Well, at level 30 I would clone my main raiding / grouped specced character. I would then ETR+TR the orginal and run a new life from level 1 (or 15). While doing so I could and would swap to the clone when any raids or groups pop up at cap and run those on the clone. Thus even those with just 1 character would be able to add to the pool of cap group/raid players while still runnings TRs. Especially for those that level up slowly that would be a huge advantage in terms of either being able to group at cap or group on the TRing character.

For those that play alot pretty much the same is simply done with a few alts but many DDO players do not play enough for that or do not enjoy it.

[mikarddo]

double post.

[Wizard1406]

Interesting idea mikarddo, I'd love to be able to play endgame and TR at the same time, but I think it would be too much work to code I think :-/

I think in heroics and maybe epics, what disencourages grouping is: unless a quest can be split up, strong players can run R1 solo just as fast as they would if in a group (one shotting mobs, and killing even bosses in a few hits). The xp for higher reaper is just not worth it, until 15+. Or more like 20+, some people even go R1 all the way to legendary quests.

If rxp was worth it for higher skulls, even for 1-29, then people would group up more, as reaper with higher skulls is significantly easier & faster in a group, even lower level quests.

And another big issue, why teleports would be great: A lot of people don't want to wait for latecomers to enter. If the party leader says "wait for xy" and some impatient people finish the quest anyway 4 min later, while xy is still on the way, they just wasted xy's time.

And some people don't want to run through wilderness solo to an IP quest, too much of a bother or too difficult to find the path. (Even after years I still don't know the way without wiki to some quests)

[Question2005]

There is one very easy way to merge the servers that would require minimal effort on SSG's part.

Just make all server transfers free so that people can transfer their main + bank alts to the server of their choice.

The community would eventually consolidate on fewer servers and it would make finding parties much easier.

Im sure some sort of refund option could be figured out to convert guild ship amenities back into plat/shards so that people could setup their guilds on the new server again, something like that. Renown could be converted into an item that could be transferred over as well and when used, would grant renown to the new guild. Cant be much harder than coding a way to convert old augments into new ones (which SSG has already proven that they can do). The game keeps clear records of which amenities are on the ship, so the information is there.

And while we are at it, we need to free up more names for characters, god knows how many character names have been taken by people who played more than 5 years ago and are never going to come back. Its really annoying for new players trying to come up with a decent name since almost everything is taken. I tried using a fantasy name generator and after 10 tries, all the names were still taken. Thats how ridiculous it is.

Send an email to all registered accounts warning that their name might be freed up, anyone who hasnt logged in for more than 5 years will have their character names changed to a placeholder name and given a free name change coupon. That would free up a ton of usable names for new players.

The #1 thing stopping people from paying for a transfer right now is that it only transfers one character, and the game forces you to have a dozen or more bank alts to store all your bound items. Having to start over from scratch without your bank alts is really painful, typically, only people with little to nothing to lose or who are the top 1% and want to transfer to join a top raiding guild on another server will do it.

The fact that a significant chunk of each server runs off to the hardcore server every season doesnt help either, and these people are usually the guys who are the most active at endgame (since most casual players do not care about the hardcore server at all).

The current state of affairs is silly, the small server size makes it very RNG dependant on whether you can get a group when leveling. If everyone in that level range has moved on or has already done the quests you want to do, you are SOL and have to solo. Veterans with plenty of past lives and reaper AP can solo, but its still boring and much slower than doing it in a party (and newbies have a very chance of dying when soloing).

[Deathwing_The_Dragon]

Please give us a fat bonus and merge servers. The current population is just terrible. It is like you are playing a single-player game.

Current population maybe terrible, but have you looked at their financial figures? They are rolling in the money from whales who spend 1000s of dollars on re-rolling nebula shards, reaper boosted item for reaper crafting, XP pots for reaper points farming etc. They can solo, have their own group of fellow-whales and they do not need a million population. Lynn has severely nerfed the dropping rates along with every new loot system designed and crafted for the consumption of whales. Just be happy that we can play a Korean MMO style D&D as long as possible.

[DirkTyrant]

It's true. The current servers can handle a MUCH bigger population than they currently carry. I remember playing when DDO went "free". The population on EVERY server soared... and they handled it. The HC server handles roughly twice a current server population... with a bit of an issue, but fixable. The temporary solution would be to merge HALF of the servers.... into other servers... and make all transfers free. If there were only 3 remaining servers... the populations would grow, but not uncontrollably... and we would feel like the HC server - that we weren't playing alone...

[mikarddo]

Current population maybe terrible, but have you looked at their financial figures? They are rolling in the money from whales who spend 1000s of dollars on re-rolling nebula shards, reaper boosted item for reaper crafting, XP pots for reaper points farming etc. They can solo, have their own group of fellow-whales and they do not need a million population. Lynn has severely nerfed the dropping rates along with every new loot system designed and crafted for the consumption of whales. Just be happy that we can play a Korean MMO style D&D as long as possible.

I beg to differ. Most loot in DDO is easy to get with good drop rates.

Having a few items like Nebula frags , + reaper hats or +mythic+reaper be rare or beyond rare does not change that. Infact, imho its the perception that *everything* needs to be easily acccessible thats wrong.

You can definitely play DDO and play well without resorting to rerolling 100s or 1000s of chests and having 156 reaper points isnt really important either.

[Wizard1406]

Yeah DDO is nowhere near "typical Korean MMO with mega grind, bad RNG and pay2win". Look into Neverwinter for a D&D game with Korean style RNG and pay to win ;-)

In DDO BIS gear has like 5-10% chance for the right item in quests (forgot the math for 3-6 different items with a 33% chance of getting any at all) and usually drops within 20 runs or so and also no more than 20 (?) runs of a raid through runes

In Neverwinter getting BIS or second best in slot pets , mounts etc. are like a 1 in 1000 chance OR farm astral diamonds for months OR swipe your credit card -.- I left that game quickly after hitting max level.

[Question2005]

Yeah DDO is nowhere near "typical Korean MMO with mega grind, bad RNG and pay2win". Look into Neverwinter for a D&D game with Korean style RNG and pay to win ;-)

In DDO BIS gear has like 5-10% chance for the right item in quests (forgot the math for 3-6 different items with a 33% chance of getting any at all) and usually drops within 20 runs or so and also no more than 20 (?) runs of a raid through runes

In Neverwinter getting BIS or second best in slot pets , mounts etc. are like a 1 in 1000 chance OR farm astral diamonds for months OR swipe your credit card -.- I left that game quickly after hitting max level.

Ive played "typical korean MMOs" and they were in many ways superior to DDO. For one thing, they have functional inventory and storage systems...you do not need to make a dozen bank alts and farm favor to store your bound to account gear. This saves a LOT of time.

You do not need to sit there for hours figuring out how to fit in a stat to your end game gear set either (aka playing gear tetris). Most of the time, each higher level gear set is better, you just upgrade to it, its very straight forward.

Drops do not bind, so you can trade with players. Got a duplicate gauntlets? Trade or sell it so that you can buy the missing helmet for your set.

They have an actual, functioning economy, which DDO lacks.

Way better and more exciting events. I mean, lol...look at DDO. Festivult? Nobody cares. Korean MMOs have events that drop and give away items that everyone wants, valuable items used to upgrade your gear, limited time boss fights, etc. When a big event happens, all the players drop everything to do the event. Do you even see anyone in DDO talking about Festivult, let alone being excited for it? Remember when DDO used to have exciting events like the marketplace devil invasion? Look at the events we have now. Its just sad...

They unironically have better customer service. GMs are required to reply to tickets within 3 business days and they have live chat so you can talk to a GM in real time. DDO's customer support is notorious for ignoring paying customers. Everyone has heard of someone who lost stuff during TR and was then ignored by customer support and there was nothing they could do, they could not file a complaint or anything.

Yea, they usually have way rarer drop rates but thats off set by the ability to trade for it and the fact that items last for a long time. As an example, one of the ones i used to play introduced a new tier of gear every 2 years or so. The previous tier was still fine for fighting the new bosses (just not optimal), so if you wanted to, you could use the same gear for 4 years before having to upgrade to fight bosses 2 tiers above your current gear.

And it is entirely possible to get all your cash shop items from events for free just by doing the events, even if you are a new player. There are no content locks. Things have improved in DDO for new players but only if they managed to snag the free quest coupon...otherwise they are stuck paying for VIP to progress. I made a full set of top tier end game gear just by doing events for a year...hardly "pay2win". I didnt need to shell out a single cent at all.

Dont get me wrong, DDO has many things going for it such as the builds, the quest system (at least, the good quests...stuff like slave lords can die in a fire), the TR system...but there are many ways in which it is bad as well.

[shores11]

Please give us a fat bonus and merge servers. The current population is just terrible. It is like you are playing a single-player game.

/not signed

[OldSchoolDNDGuy82]

...It is like you are playing a single-player game.

That is all DDO is for me! I have no real world friends who give a rats butt about DDO. They're mostly playing Valorant right now.

[Deathwing_The_Dragon]

Most loot in DDO is easy to get with good drop rates.

You can definitely play DDO and play well without resorting to rerolling 100s or 1000s of chests and having 156 reaper points isnt really important either.

Thanks for the laugh - needed that today. Mate you have absolutely no clue so stop the drivel. There are reasons people run with 5 alts for the item they need, ransacking that chest for weeks to get the item they want. When Lynn took over as loot dev, the drop rate was 33% in Elite, she has nerfed them to probably 5% to encourage shard re-rolls, to the fact that some items only exists in ddowiki ;)

Anyways this is not about the loot thread, we desperately need server merge but we won't get them. The new executive producer coming from internally is not a great news either - it will be status quo for years to come.