constitution

[jellyfish21]

For developers to base all kills around constitution damage is disapointing.
A character build can come from more than 300 different ways.
Having a build only based around doing con damage puts an end to imagination.
No rogue can base his damage on sneak.
No fighter can base his damage on high strength.
Even barbarians are relying on improving their crit chances, not their strength base, for kills.
Wizards are becoming total relient on con damage to effeciently flesh to stone.

The bases of this need of developers is the monty hall effect.
The huge amount of damage and hit points of players must be offset by monsters having the same.

I propose a server that does not have a monty hall effect where we can actually have a character build that matters.

[Uska]

I would love to see a server with loot nerfed down to a nice level along with monster stats being dropped, heck my dream server would have masterwork equipment or plain silver items mean something until lvl 4 or so.

[...v...]

For developers to base all kills around constitution damage is disapointing.
A character build can come from more than 300 different ways.
Having a build only based around doing con damage puts an end to imagination.
No rogue can base his damage on sneak.
No fighter can base his damage on high strength.
Even barbarians are relying on improving their crit chances, not their strength base, for kills.
Wizards are becoming total relient on con damage to effeciently flesh to stone.

The bases of this need of developers is the monty hall effect.
The huge amount of damage and hit points of players must be offset by monsters having the same.

I propose a server that does not have a monty hall effect where we can actually have a character build that matters.

Con damage doesnt affect all creatures...and not everyone has WoP...and if they do and youre running with them be glad the quest will be easy. Try running shroud with masterworks items. You still need a good character for end bosses trash mobs wops.
What do most people like about this game? The loot not the hours of wacking at portals or a demon.

[tihocan]

You can't base a character only around con dmg, as he's going to be very limited against immune creatures.

[jellyfish21]

The loot is NOT why people play DDO.
People play DDO for much more than that.
Fun
Social
Challange
The love of D&D

Many of us say loot is nice, but loot is the last thing we play for.

Immune creatures. you are right. WoP builds do nothing for that. However, they make ghost touch disrupters, smiters and banishers as well, all for those immune to crits. Oh yea, don't forget the vorpal. All of those weapons make a character build obsolete.

[jellyfish21]

Challange.
Did I say challange.
Do you have a challange when playing DDO?
This is a game.
Games are supposed to be challanging.
Does your WoP make it challanging?

[tihocan]

Immune creatures. you are right. WoP builds do nothing for that. However, they make ghost touch disrupters, smiters and banishers as well, all for those immune to crits. Oh yea, don't forget the vorpal. All of those weapons make a character build obsolete.

All these weapons are useless against red/purple names.

[Drinkin]

The loot is NOT why people play DDO.
People play DDO for much more than that.
Fun
Social
Challange
The love of D&D

Many of us say loot is nice, but loot is the last thing we play for.

Immune creatures. you are right. WoP builds do nothing for that. However, they make ghost touch disrupters, smiters and banishers as well, all for those immune to crits. Oh yea, don't forget the vorpal. All of those weapons make a character build obsolete.

I fail to see how any of those weapons make a character build obsolete...

Challange.
Did I say challange.
Do you have a challange when playing DDO?
This is a game.
Games are supposed to be challanging.
Does your WoP make it challanging?

No but my WoPs do make questing with my ranger quite a bit more fun same with my banishers smiters and disrupters...

[Josh]

There is no fun without LOOT!

[Chaos000]

Yes, the game is still challenging even if you had your choice of all the equipment and weapons in the game. You might have an easier time then other players but that’s why we are so driven to seek out to acquire those bloodstones, icy rainments, wounding of puncturing, vorpals, disruptors… You don’t *have* to run a quest with bard song, poison resist, greater heroism, resist/protection from elements and haste but it sure helps finish objectives faster.

People play DDO because they are given the flexibility to play the way they want to play to receive the most enjoyment from the game experience. However, there will always be others who might object to their play style in which case they'll end up consistently grouping with same-style people.

Players do twink out and optimize their character to specifically rampage through content at a fraction of the time it takes an average group. The challenge to them is being able to complete a quest/raid faster without a pressing need to consume resources and its fun for them. It's immensely enjoyable for a cleric to be at half mana at the end of part 5 of the shroud due to high dps having not burned a single scroll or mana pot.

The problem comes when people get to a point where they want the devs to equalize the playfield by nerfing the fifteen items that powergamers have that they have yet to get one of.

I think challenge is what you make of it. If the devs created a new server that was permanent opposite of a loot weekend without scaling down the challenge to complete. I personally would think that would make it even less desireable to play.


There’s two sides of the extreme:

1) Gimped but fun build; There’s someone looking out for you so you can do what you do best (clerics watches health bars, caster makes sure everyone has buffs, melee go in and do damage); Keep the group together and wait up for the slowest person to catch up; Get all optionals; Open up a forum to discuss for twenty minutes how to best proceed in the next part of the quest; Pull mobs small groups at a time and kill everything; Quests are hard to complete if the group doesn’t have good communication and can lead to frustration;

2) Optimized build; Everyone takes care of themselves (nobody’s watching your health bar, drink a potion or use a wand); Get there fast, get there first, zerg forward and follow the dead bodies; Skip the optionals, faster we get quests done, more chests, more xp overall in the same time; Less talk, everyone knows what to do. Run past trash mobs; Quests are quick and easy and can lead to boredom;

[SableShadow]

The loot is NOT why people play DDO.
People play DDO for much more than that.
Fun
Social
Challange
The love of D&D

Many of us say loot is nice, but loot is the last thing we play for.

And you don't need any gear or equipment to do all of that. There are plenty of RP and Permadeath guilds out there that don't and won't grind gear.

Immune creatures. you are right. WoP builds do nothing for that. However, they make ghost touch disrupters, smiters and banishers as well, all for those immune to crits. Oh yea, don't forget the vorpal. All of those weapons make a character build obsolete.

To be honest, I have difficulty seeing this as anything other than "I don't want to grind gear, but I want my character to be as good as those that grind gear".

[suitepotato]

Challange.
Did I say challange.
Do you have a challange when playing DDO?
This is a game.
Games are supposed to be challanging.
Does your WoP make it challanging?

Monsters who basically have stats and hp so high that they cannot otherwise be taken down in a reasonable frame of time for a party of six given the real time play and game mechanics isn't a challenge, it's an annoyance.

In PnP, the game asks you to suspend disbelief even more than a martial arts movie. In reality, that orc patrol of fifteen is not going to strike specific people one at a time with glorious one on ones to be shot close up in living color. A team of six, even with a cleric and caster who were fast at their craft, would easily be overtaken. The orcs with the melee weapons would rush in and put their well-honed orc martial arts into play, being able to block with shields and weapons, being able to kick, punch, bite, and claw as well, and be able to see multiple targets of opportunity as they engaged.

They'd leap forward, swing and nail the pally's shield, and at the same time lean to the side and side kick the barb who was too busy paying attention to another orc, knocking him off his feet. He'd then spin round and nail the pally with the hilt of his axe, spin again and bring a devestating overhand down on the pally's back. The caster would then throw a fireball at him, but get nailed by a volley of arrows right quick. Blood goes splattering, smell of frying flesh, people are caught up in a hectic fight to live another second. The party would be hard pressed. Three fighters taking out fifty orcs only happens in Hollywood.

Clearly, no game that isn't out of a Star Trek holodeck would manage anything like this. Maybe if the mechanics of Mortal Kombat were melded to DDO such that you would see everything first person, and let you switch up from enemy to enemy, maybe throw in some autotargeting AI and canned combat sequences... maybe then you'd get a bit more feel for actual combat and the way the survival instincts overtake and higher thoughts go out the window and you can't even remember your name or why you're there and there's a knife coming at your face.

But the pen and paper from which this comes is even more silly than we get in DDO. Monsters and attacks are dealt with slowly and methodically one by one and unless the DM is thinking ahead in great detail move by move, the combat is... orc attacks pally... roll... blocked... orc attacks barb... roll... hits... roll... 3 points of damage... orc attacks cleric... roll...

So the method of adapatation to real time semi-god's-eye pov with human players and monster AI with less creativity than an overttired DM preoccupied with midterms has been this and along the way the only way to keep the human superiority to the machine AI down to remotely a challenge has been to make monsters insanely toughly built to the point some single monsters very nearly require six people to take down.

Stat damagers are a way to make the time to beat any given opponent stay down, lest people get bored. BORED. That is the primary reason most people who tried DnD way back when never played more than once. It wasn't for nothing that techie types who did model rocketry, electronics, auto tinkering, and amature chemistry were more likely to be DnD people than your football team captain. The modern gaming public is nothing like that scheme and wants reasonable quickness, less frustration, more sense of accomplishment. Sorry people, but the majority of the gaming community has the attention span of chihuahuas on crystal meth no matter what their IQ or introvert/extrovert ratio. They want faster sense of getting somewhere.

(What did people think was the reason for every other game on any given platform having a guidebook at Electronics Boutique, Borders, etc. ?)

If you want a challenge, try to explain ethics and their sociocultural underpinnings vis a vis basic survival behaviors to politicians or the US tax code to a post-modern painter on a deadline for a showing. Or play the Abbot or something equally pointless. But don't expect that the mechanics of this game can be made to be like that of the table game where character design was important.

[VirieSquichie]

The modern gaming public is nothing like that scheme and wants reasonable quickness, less frustration, more sense of accomplishment. Sorry people, but the majority of the gaming community has the attention span of chihuahuas on crystal meth no matter what their IQ or introvert/extrovert ratio. They want faster sense of getting somewhere.

One reason people want quick, non-frustrating experiences with a sense of accomplishment is that all too often in today's world there is a feeling that your efforts just don't matter, that things will be the same regardless. Games offer a way to see a positive reward/benefit for one's actions. People want quick because they have limited time before they have to go back to the real-life grind they detest so much.

The other half of that is that the majority of today's culture is about fast fast fast. No one wants a game to be slow because they're conditioned for instant everything. Microwaves. Drive-throughs. Cell phones. E-mail. Expressways. Air travel. Express elevators. Pre-manufactured...everything. The cardboard-and-concrete, disposable/consumable mentality of convenience and expedience over all other considerations. There is no way to make that mentality happy for more than brief bursts.

This is what the devs face. Lucky them.

I actually had some of my company's sales reps tell me in a meeting Monday that it was too much trouble for our users to use the "search" box at the top of every page on our company's website. They wanted something faster. Faster than "type what you want into this box and the webserver will find it and display it for you, no need to actually LOOK at anything anywhere on the site".... I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one...