Introduction and Development Plans

[PurpleFooz]

Hi everyone, following ProducerRowan’s letter, it seems like an opportune time to re-introduce myself to the community. You probably already know a bit of me from the dungeons I’ve created: Partycrashers, the Delirium dungeons, Blockade Buster, Undermine, I Dream of Jeets, Schemes of the Enemy, and Belly of the Beast (proper credit should also go to Keeper and Enosity for the visuals they made.)

I was lead of the content creation group while making some of those dungeons, but earlier this year I also became the lead of the design group as a whole.
As lead, I work with Producers Rowan, Glin and Vyvyanne to figure out the strategies of who works on what and when. That’s a bit tricky, since we know that some players want nothing but content, while other players advocate new classes, or enhancements, etc. It helps that we have so many developers that are so proficient in their specialties – rather than having all the developers tripping over each other by working on the same thing, we’re organized into different teams to work on different features at once.

So here are what the different teams are working on:

• Enhancements & Epic Destinies
  
  
  • The developers who specialize on character advancement systems are concentrating on addressing the Enhancement issues that the community's submitted through the bug-tracker. There are currently developers spending all of their time addressing these bugs. Looking at the numbers of enhancement bugs we're fixing compared to what's coming in through the bug reports, we're hopeful that enhancements will soon reach a point where the vast majority of players feel it’s stable and complete.
    
    
  • We know that for a lot of players, “complete” means more enhancement trees. We have goals to make more trees for specific classes - we just released the Eldritch Knight for example. While we’re trying to fix as many enhancement bugs as we can for each release, we’d like to make sure we take the time to create each enhancement tree correctly, so you’ll see the trees trickle out at a slower rate.
    
    
  • And, we’ve already started a similar process to crush Epic Destiny issues. There are multiple developers working on fixing the reported ED bugs, and we’re planning out how to finish out remaining trees for everyone to feel that the system is complete. Piloto has already made posts to poll the communities for ideas on the next ED.
  
  
• Treasure improvements
  
  
  • Simultaneously, we have a different team dedicated to treasure features. They’re currently focused on resolving the “ghostbane” issues. Some of you may already have seen DrOctothorpe’s posts on that topic. He and the rest of the treasure team are making changes to address as much player feedback as they can for patch and Update 21, and then they’ll move on to develop new treasure to go along with the new Update 21 content.
    
    
  • Some of the guys are overlapping with the character advancements team to look at the number of Commendations of Valor we’re giving out. We know that there are complaints that we’re giving out too few, and we’re working to address that. Some of what’s making it complex is that we want to give out the right number not only for the immediate short-term, but that it’ll stay the right number 6 months from now or 2 years from now.
  
  
• New dungeons
  
  
  • Yes, we also have a whole separate team busily making brand new content too, as well as fixing bugs in old content. We know this is the bread & butter of DDO, so this is our largest team.
    BTW, I haven’t stopped working on new dungeons. I’m about to go back and put some more work into the Haunted Halls of Eveningstar. Working with Ed Greenwood has been a blast, and he’s certainly set an ambitious target. The Haunted Halls already has more gameplay than what I put in any of my previous dungeons and there’s still much more to go!

Aside from the efforts going into those priorities, there is also planning and setup work going into the future features that ProducerRowan mentioned. Don’t worry, it’s not our intent to simply ignore systems such as Housing or Crafting either – we’ll get to those once we’re through with our current pushes with core features like Enhancements and Epic Destinies .

A final thing before I head back into dungeon work – we’re really trying to keep the flow of communication going. Over the next few weeks, developers from each of the disciplines will be talking about what’s happening in their particular specialties. This is to give the players the information you’re asking for, but it’s also to help the developers get the feedback they need to properly take DDO where everyone wants it to go!

- PurpleFooz

[Teh_Troll]

You need a team dedicated to nerfing monks.

[Lerl]

Hi everyone, following ProducerRowan’s letter, it seems like an opportune time to re-introduce myself to the community. You probably already know a bit of me from the dungeons I’ve created: Partycrashers, the Delirium dungeons, Blockade Buster, Undermine, I Dream of Jeets, Schemes of the Enemy, and Belly of the Beast (proper credit should also go to Keeper and Enosity for the visuals they made.)

I was lead of the content creation group while making some of those dungeons, but earlier this year I also became the lead of the design group as a whole.
As lead, I work with Producers Rowan, Glin and Vyvyanne to figure out the strategies of who works on what and when. That’s a bit tricky, since we know that some players want nothing but content, while other players advocate new classes, or enhancements, etc. It helps that we have so many developers that are so proficient in their specialties – rather than having all the developers tripping over each other by working on the same thing, we’re organized into different teams to work on different features at once.

So here are what the different teams are working on:

• Enhancements & Epic Destinies
  
  • The developers who specialize on character advancement systems are concentrating on addressing the Enhancement issues that the community's submitted through the bug-tracker. There are currently developers spending all of their time addressing these bugs. Looking at the numbers of enhancement bugs we're fixing compared to what's coming in through the bug reports, we're hopeful that enhancements will soon reach a point where the vast majority of players feel it’s stable and complete.
  • We know that for a lot of players, “complete” means more enhancement trees. We have goals to make more trees for specific classes - we just released the Eldritch Knight for example. While we’re trying to fix as many enhancement bugs as we can for each release, we’d like to make sure we take the time to create each enhancement tree correctly, so you’ll see the trees trickle out at a slower rate.
  • And, we’ve already started a similar process to crush Epic Destiny issues. There are multiple developers working on fixing the reported ED bugs, and we’re planning out how to finish out remaining trees for everyone to feel that the system is complete. Piloto has already made posts to poll the communities for ideas on the next ED.
  
  
• Treasure improvements
  
  • Simultaneously, we have a different team dedicated to treasure features. They’re currently focused on resolving the “ghostbane” issues. Some of you may already have seen DrOctothorpe’s posts on that topic. He and the rest of the treasure team are making changes to address as much player feedback as they can for patch and Update 21, and then they’ll move on to develop new treasure to go along with the new Update 21 content.
  • Some of the guys are overlapping with the character advancements team to look at the number of Commendations of Valor we’re giving out. We know that there are complaints that we’re giving out too few, and we’re working to address that. Some of what’s making it complex is that we want to give out the right number not only for the immediate short-term, but that it’ll stay the right number 6 months from now or 2 years from now.
  
  
• New dungeons
  
  • Yes, we also have a whole separate team busily making brand new content too, as well as fixing bugs in old content. We know this is the bread & butter of DDO, so this is our largest team.
    BTW, I haven’t stopped working on new dungeons. I’m about to go back and put some more work into the Haunted Halls of Eveningstar. Working with Ed Greenwood has been a blast, and he’s certainly set an ambitious target. The Haunted Halls already has more gameplay than what I put in any of my previous dungeons and there’s still much more to go!

Aside from the efforts going into those priorities, there is also planning and setup work going into the future features that ProducerRowan mentioned. Don’t worry, it’s not our intent to simply ignore systems such as Housing or Crafting either – we’ll get to those once we’re through with our current pushes with core features like Enhancements and Epic Destinies .

A final thing before I head back into dungeon work – we’re really trying to keep the flow of communication going. Over the next few weeks, developers from each of the disciplines will be talking about what’s happening in their particular specialties. This is to give the players the information you’re asking for, but it’s also to help the developers get the feedback they need to properly take DDO where everyone wants it to go!

- PurpleFooz

Wow. Thank you. +1

[Livmo]

Thank you for those upcoming changes and improvements!

Moar Sharn

[SirValentine]

it seems like an opportune time to re-introduce myself to the community.
<snip>
earlier this year I also became the lead of the design group as a whole.

Hello, and congrats on the promotion.

And, we’ve already started a similar process to crush Epic Destiny issues. There are multiple developers working on fixing the reported ED bugs, and we’re planning out how to finish out remaining trees for everyone to feel that the system is complete. Piloto has already made posts to poll the communities for ideas on the next ED.

I was quite surprised at the the degree of consistency in the replies to Piloto. Several themes kept getting mentioned by lots of different people.

One of those was, not just bug-fixing or whole-new-destiny, but also possibly re-working existing destinies. I think it's fair to say that some are quite a bit weaker than others currently, or don't have a well-defined role, or fail to achieve any of the several disparate goals they seem to have. Likewise for individual abilities within destinies.

Treasure improvements
<snip>
New dungeons

I'm glad the ghostbane-random-loot mess is getting fixed. But beyond that:

I hope there's some good communication here. One of the things I really like is NAMED loot that is useful, either directly MORE useful than similar random loot, or with useful UNIQUE abilities, and thematic to the pack or adventure that it comes from. And with drop rates that are MODERATELY low, so it's not instant gratification, but achievable in some reasonable moderate amount of time.

A final thing before I head back into dungeon work – we’re really trying to keep the flow of communication going.

Excellent. I like hearing from you all, and love when I can tell you're listening to us. Thanks for the update.

[Memnir]

A final thing before I head back into dungeon work – we’re really trying to keep the flow of communication going. Over the next few weeks, developers from each of the disciplines will be talking about what’s happening in their particular specialties. This is to give the players the information you’re asking for, but it’s also to help the developers get the feedback they need to properly take DDO where everyone wants it to go!

- PurpleFooz

Thanks for the encouraging news.

[toaftoaf]

it's a shame there are soo many full time teams on stuff that just should have been release when it worked right.

fact

[StoptheRock]

Good stuff. Always feels great to read from the devs.

By the way, is Feather of Sun still around there?

[Lifespawn]

is there certain people we should send pm's too reguarding issues above and beyond bug reporting as that has failed in the past and a continuously updated Known Issues list would go an extremely long way to quelling our fears that things just go unnoticed.

Personally I have a problem with 2 enhancments in the newest EK tree one has finally been recognized but the other I fear will get no notice because it hits a seriously small set of players and seems to be a very easy fix imo For Cormyr lasts 1 min when it should last 2.

I know that you feel once you make a known issues list you have to fix stuff on there and that we will hound you over some taking forever but it would be a huge help and make people more willing to put the effort in to help you guys do your jobs rather than a small subset of diehards still doing testing.

[rest]

Where are Eladrin and MadFloyd?

[levesque2004]

I'll point out, Dev Tracker is not picking up all the devs. MajMal is not picked up, for example. Might want to address that... it'd help folks find the communications from the devs. Might even reduce the number of "devs don't communicate" complaints (yeah, i'm a hopeless romantic).

[rest]

A final thing before I head back into dungeon work – we’re really trying to keep the flow of communication going. Over the next few weeks, developers from each of the disciplines will be talking about what’s happening in their particular specialties. This is to give the players the information you’re asking for, but it’s also to help the developers get the feedback they need to properly take DDO where everyone wants it to go!

What's the over/under on this not actually happening?Any bookmakers in the house?

[Hafeal]

Cheers, thanks for the breakdown and news.

The revamped communication we have seen and continue to see, is a major positive in me returning to ViP.

[Drwaz99]

Where are Eladrin and MadFloyd?

They were good so I am thinking Infinite Crisis..

[Memnir]

What's the over/under on this not actually happening?Any bookmakers in the house?

I'm not going to lay odds, but this is not the first time we've heard such things being said. Yeah, it might be cause to once again use the Charlie Brown/football pic - but (as always, which is why it's so apt so often) I hope not. I'm hoping that this might be the time they follow through. Time will tell.

I'm hoping that the last few years have been a learning experience for Turbine, and the takeaway was that they need to do better to keep the game profitable. Again, time will tell.

[Thar]

Hi everyone, following ProducerRowan’s letter, it seems like an opportune time to re-introduce myself to the community. You probably already know a bit of me from the dungeons I’ve created: Partycrashers, the Delirium dungeons, Blockade Buster, Undermine, I Dream of Jeets, Schemes of the Enemy, and Belly of the Beast (proper credit should also go to Keeper and Enosity for the visuals they made.)

I was lead of the content creation group while making some of those dungeons, but earlier this year I also became the lead of the design group as a whole.
As lead, I work with Producers Rowan, Glin and Vyvyanne to figure out the strategies of who works on what and when. That’s a bit tricky, since we know that some players want nothing but content, while other players advocate new classes, or enhancements, etc. It helps that we have so many developers that are so proficient in their specialties – rather than having all the developers tripping over each other by working on the same thing, we’re organized into different teams to work on different features at once.

So here are what the different teams are working on:

• Enhancements & Epic Destinies
  
  
  • The developers who specialize on character advancement systems are concentrating on addressing the Enhancement issues that the community's submitted through the bug-tracker. There are currently developers spending all of their time addressing these bugs. Looking at the numbers of enhancement bugs we're fixing compared to what's coming in through the bug reports, we're hopeful that enhancements will soon reach a point where the vast majority of players feel it’s stable and complete.
    
    
  • We know that for a lot of players, “complete” means more enhancement trees. We have goals to make more trees for specific classes - we just released the Eldritch Knight for example. While we’re trying to fix as many enhancement bugs as we can for each release, we’d like to make sure we take the time to create each enhancement tree correctly, so you’ll see the trees trickle out at a slower rate.
    
    
  • And, we’ve already started a similar process to crush Epic Destiny issues. There are multiple developers working on fixing the reported ED bugs, and we’re planning out how to finish out remaining trees for everyone to feel that the system is complete. Piloto has already made posts to poll the communities for ideas on the next ED.
  
  
• Treasure improvements
  
  
  • Simultaneously, we have a different team dedicated to treasure features. They’re currently focused on resolving the “ghostbane” issues. Some of you may already have seen DrOctothorpe’s posts on that topic. He and the rest of the treasure team are making changes to address as much player feedback as they can for patch and Update 21, and then they’ll move on to develop new treasure to go along with the new Update 21 content.
    
    
  • Some of the guys are overlapping with the character advancements team to look at the number of Commendations of Valor we’re giving out. We know that there are complaints that we’re giving out too few, and we’re working to address that. Some of what’s making it complex is that we want to give out the right number not only for the immediate short-term, but that it’ll stay the right number 6 months from now or 2 years from now.
  
  
• New dungeons
  
  
  • Yes, we also have a whole separate team busily making brand new content too, as well as fixing bugs in old content. We know this is the bread & butter of DDO, so this is our largest team.
    BTW, I haven’t stopped working on new dungeons. I’m about to go back and put some more work into the Haunted Halls of Eveningstar. Working with Ed Greenwood has been a blast, and he’s certainly set an ambitious target. The Haunted Halls already has more gameplay than what I put in any of my previous dungeons and there’s still much more to go!

Aside from the efforts going into those priorities, there is also planning and setup work going into the future features that ProducerRowan mentioned. Don’t worry, it’s not our intent to simply ignore systems such as Housing or Crafting either – we’ll get to those once we’re through with our current pushes with core features like Enhancements and Epic Destinies .

A final thing before I head back into dungeon work – we’re really trying to keep the flow of communication going. Over the next few weeks, developers from each of the disciplines will be talking about what’s happening in their particular specialties. This is to give the players the information you’re asking for, but it’s also to help the developers get the feedback they need to properly take DDO where everyone wants it to go!

- PurpleFooz

please please please no epic 3 barrel cove unless you are trashing everything there and making it all new. the quests stink and are skipped now whenver possible as xp is bad, quests are annoying.

EPIC tempus spine!!! that is what you should work on. The only other series i hear people want epic is water works.

I'd day epic titan but most people hate those quests too as too long. Epic threnal but people want to choke coyle as it is.

[dunklezhan]

Don’t worry, it’s not our intent to simply ignore systems such as Housing or Crafting either – we’ll get to those once we’re through with our current pushes with core features like Enhancements and Epic Destinies .

Less talk. More push.

I jest. Don't stop the communication ?please.

[droid327]

That all sounds great. The only thing I really consistently wish you'd do better is more transparency at the design stage...it seems like, way too often, the dev team mulls behind closed doors, spending a lot of time coming up with an idea that they present to the playerbase, and get blasted for, then send it back to square one for redesign. Let us in the whole process, let us see the ideas as they're evolving, let us make suggestions or point out problems. You're always free to disregard our input, after all. Most industries would (and do) pay lots of money for the kind of customer feedback that MMO playerbases give willingly and vociferously...

No one has any complaints about the lack of effort of the dev team to push out new content. They have complaints about new content getting pushed out, then getting pulled back, redone, pushed out again, and so on...

For example, CoVs. The devs calculated out the number, and pushed it live before they explained what it was and how they got there. Share your data with us first, share your logic, we could have pointed out what assumptions you were making wrong, and how to correct them. Then you wouldn't have to waste design and coding time going back to change things.

[Oxarhamar]

Snip*[*]Some of the guys are overlapping with the character advancements team to look at the number of Commendations of Valor we’re giving out. We know that there are complaints that we’re giving out too few, and we’re working to address that. Some of what’s making it complex is that we want to give out the right number not only for the immediate short-term, but that it’ll stay the right number 6 months from now or 2 years from now. [/LIST]
- PurpleFooz

You can't have the Correct numbers now when the level cap is 28 and the correct numbers 2 years from now when the cap is 30.

When the level cap is raised it will increase the amount of CoV a player can gain while capping by default.

More high level quests will grant more CoV:
LVL 29 quest EN 24 EH 39 EE 70
LVL 30 quest EN 26 EH 42 EE 75

if your number of CoV required to buy a Heart are the right number for 2 years from now then they are the wrong number for NOW.

The simple answer is to reduce the CoV required to gain a Heart for now and readjust when the level Cap is raised.
(you'd have cheers when the numbers were reduced and pitchforks when it was raised but, that's the only way the numbers can be correct both now and in the future)

[Oxarhamar]

please please please no epic 3 barrel cove unless you are trashing everything there and making it all new. the quests stink and are skipped now whenver possible as xp is bad, quests are annoying.

EPIC tempus spine!!! that is what you should work on. The only other series i hear people want epic is water works.

I'd day epic titan but most people hate those quests too as too long. Epic threnal but people want to choke coyle as it is.

Just because' you don't like 3BC doesn't mean the XP is bad

the XP is bad because, you don't know the quests and can't complete them in a reasonable amount of time.

My old 3 man Static TR group always made a run thru 3BC the XP is very good but, you've got to know the quests and be prepared.


I will never say no to any content being Epic