Nebula and reaper item bonus systems designed for no-lifers?

[Deathwing_The_Dragon]

Returning player here - just found out that Nebula fragment is as rare as sunlight in UK and to add reaper bonus to your items, you need 100 reaper items first. Why is every system designed in this game ignores players who have life outside of DDO? Has the dev team resigned to the fact that new or returning players won't last and any system must be designed to satisfy the whales & no-lifer crowd in every possible way??

[rabidfox]

Because there's tons of things for different players to do- ranging from stuff for casual 1st lifers all the way to people with all past lives who play a bunch. You don't need the nebula fragment or added-on reaper bonuses to be viable in the game; there's various grind goals for those who lack other things to do which is good longer term game health.

[PedXing20]

...Why is every system designed in this game ignores players who have life outside of DDO...

Why does every casual player insist that playing 1 hour a month entitles them to every aspect and feature of the game instantly? Do they not understand that making everything easy to get with virtually no effort will result in the whales and veterans who have proven track records of playing (and paying) a ton leave the game ...

[superevbully]

Returning player here - just found out that Nebula fragment is as rare as sunlight in UK and to add reaper bonus to your items, you need 100 reaper items first. Why is every system designed in this game ignores players who have life outside of DDO? Has the dev team resigned to the fact that new or returning players won't last and any system must be designed to satisfy the whales & no-lifer crowd in every possible way??

so u just returned and want the cake .............bake 1st then eat

[Blerk]

I think part of the trick to staying with DDO these days is realising you can enjoy the game (and do well at it) without having everything in it. That includes all the past life feats and access to every item and/or bonus from every crafting system. It's very easy to get burnt out chasing things you don't need.

It'll be interesting to see what happens to the game if enough people come around to this way of thinking because a large part of DDO's business model centres around making people feel they are behind everyone else if they aren't going through the various rat races in an effort to 'keep up' and making it a slog if you don't spend to make it easier. I doubt the game would survive a general loss of interest in chasing past lives and I'd be more confident about the game's financial health if I thought its other sources of revenue could keep it afloat.

What I suspect would happen is another stat squish to increase the value of past lives again. And if we see a repeat of that exercise anytime soon we'll know that it wasn't really about game balance at all, it was to prod the playerbase into more consumption so they would feel like they were back at or ahead of where they were before. When NWO did this initially there was a significant chunk of the population agreeing it was needed, but when it became something they did every six months to a year it eventually became clear even to the game's most ardent supporters that it was being done to milk the population despite the same justifications made by the devs - oh yeah, it had to be done and this time it'll fix the game for sure. Let's hope the DDO devs aren't rebalancing in bad faith like this because for a game that can't get anywhere near the numbers of new players NWO does to replace veterans leaving in disgust it has potential to be a game-killer.

Unless you're sitting at cap the Nebula crafting system is kind of irrelevant and will become even more so once the level cap goes up and we get more powerful gear. If history is any guide it's a one and done crafting system which will be abandoned by the developers because they will want us using their latest and greatest new crafting system instead. If you really want a fragment just run the quests and wilderness rares as often as you can and cross your fingers, but your life will not be significantly worse from not having one of those items.

The reaper crafting system was massively misjudged regarding cost, its effect on loot sharing among players, lack of transparency about how the bonuses stack and the timing of its introduction. It's also a lot of developer effort which could have been used far more beneficially in addressing other issues in the game. In short, it seems like a badly designed vanity project which is of no use to almost everyone. It was created by people who are massively out of touch with their players and are indulging themselves in some obscure fiddling around at the expense of doing useful work. But hey, once again, the good news is you can ignore that too.