Originally Posted by
AMADHA
Thanks for asking. I've been playing for about a year, off and on, and I only have been able to get to level 11. I have started a number of other characters to "test them out" paladins, artificers, clerics, etc. most are dead now. I still have my Exploiter Tempest Ranger at lvl 11 and a level 7 (started there with the experience boost) artificer. I really like those two as I love the rogue/spell casting/kill them before they see you ranged attacks.
That said, I would first agree with the statement that you are balancing the game for the uber-player. I read a couple of pages of replies and I have no clue what they are talking about as I haven't even seen many of those quests. Uber-players. Not convinced? Look at the content you've been adding, what levels are they targeting? Done much adding of lower level quests? I have no doubt that you are not targeting new, or obviously clueless players such as myself.
On the difficulty, I play solo. I have played with one or two other players from time to time... some bad, some extremely good. By good I mean that they were so much better that I cannot for the life of me figure out how they got their character to do the stuff I saw them do! I try to play every quest in an area on normal the first time. Often, I get killed right near the end. If it happens enough I normally just abandon the quest and never try it again. (Wish I could remember the name of that last one I dumped in Kundarak.) I have found that quests got substantially harder at level 9 on normal, so much so that I won't even try many of them anymore. I find that lvl 7 to 9 quests severely challenge my lvl 11 Ranger on normal to complete. I must play Lvl 8 to 10 quests VERY slowly so as to not attract more than a couple of monsters at a time and invariably I end up encountering two+ red boss characters together somewhere and I'm toast. I have, to date, not been able to complete a level 10 quest. Playing the various festivals clearly demonstrates that my character does not have remotely enough killing power to collect squat valuable... so festivals are no fun and since the 'loot' is bound to Char they are mostly useless as well. Collectors have undergone a huge change and collecting as a result is now pretty much a pointless waste of inventory space (collectors now require a TON of junk in return for squat). Delrina has been modified so that a hireling can't get you to completion of the second 5th level quest. Sure I could team up, but I have a busy life and I can only play as time permits. Its less complicated to play solo for me. So is the game too hard, in some ways... absolutely, in others... nope. There should be a risk of death/restart while playing. However, there should be room for learning. If you change tactics and do things right/better the next time you should survive... but if it really doesn't matter how well you try to play it or you MUST be part of a party to win then that sucks.
Also, the game is way out of balance in several ways... for example dexterity: it makes you quick. So please explain why my extremely high dex ranger consistently moves slower than a low dex character with boots of 15% speed? Why is a quest played by a single character nearly impossible but a snap if there are two or three? Quests have several levels of difficulty but from my experience the only things that seem to change is the type of spells the clerics/sorcerers throw and the hit points of the individual mob members. Why doesn't the size/strength of the mobs increase with the number of players entering (mob number = Std mob + (Std Mob x (number of players - 1)) OR mob strength/lvl = std mob + ((avg player HP/avg player level) x avg player class modifier(class mod per lvl x num lvls in class)) or some such mathematical gobbledygook? Then XP for completion = quest XP x difficulty modifier x Mob strength change(played strength/std strength). Play in a group, the quest is harder more XP given, choose a different difficulty more XP given. Note I added a class modifier since I have noticed that class impacts play-ability. Mid-level (level 7 for me) Rangers/rogues/paladins seem to fair much worse than full blown spell casters. Artificers seem to hold up better than those other three, but they are also pretty weak. Straight fighters and spell casters seem to do a LOT of damage by comparison. Oh, the poisoner quest in Marketplace (just past the guard with the demon invasion) is SERIOUSLY harder than similar quests at the same level... AND ITS LONG! In summary, you should have a chance to fail at any level, especially the first time through, and with any number of players and the game should modify itself to ensure that that level of risk adjusts to the number of players playing a quest, their character level, their class mix, and the level of their gear. The chance should be the same for a solo player like me and for a well heeled reincarnated twice group of six players at the same level of challenge i.e. Hero: C, N, H, E, or Epic: C, N, H, E.
As for game play... You SERIOUSLY need to allow for some sort of mid-quest save/restart. Some quests take FOREVER to finish like the Shanticor? quest and others which have three quests all linked together in a chain that you have to walk through each and every time... Yeesh! Sometimes I have to stop playing mid-quest because I've run out of time!
I play for fun. Puzzles should NOT be a Mensa IQ test, they should be solvable, and they should NEVER place a player into a situation where the only escape is recall. Your idiot hireling should be able to get you free to try, try again. There's one with Minotaurs in Gianthold that just traps you tight (the area with multiple levers after the swim).
On things not much fun: guard the idiot quests where the idiot tries to get themselves killed (and even when they don't) and ones where you have to stop the monsters from bugging me but they don't provide a progress monitor to tell you how close that loser is getting to finishing their job before they fall down and tell you they have to start over. Man! I've grown to hate those with a passion!
To be honest I'd rather play 0-8 than 9+ level quests. I'm finding levelling extremely tedious, probably because I'm doing something wrong and advanced game play is simply not fun for me (neither have I liked the recent 'additions'... astral shards and their push, the collector change with its pushing the shards as well, and the ridiculously stupid daily rolls.). While I like the challenge offered by each new quest I encounter in DDO, the game is simply becoming tedious... you detect a hidden passage, but damned if you can find it. Maybe if I got closer, oh! sorry you just got snagged by a leg-hold trap that you also didn't detect when you searched for stuff AND you just lost a bunch of hit points, but you get free, and look there's another one that you also didn't detect and now some ranger/spell caster has found you.... I'm currently a VIP, but to be honest I'm thinking of dropping VIP and perhaps quitting DDO completely.
So I think you can fairly easily fix the "Enough with the easy button" uber-players request and address the "I just want to have fun, play my character's role, be challenged a bit, be surprised a bit and leave." players such a myself. It's all in whether or not you want to spend the money rewriting a huge chunk of code or just keep doing what you're doing? Certainly adding some more lower level areas... perhaps areas targeting a particular class to train us newbies to be better might help, but it won't solve the underlying issues. However, those newbies might have more fun playing, because the alternative is that casual paying players such as myself will pack it in, and move on. To which I think I can hear "and good riddance!", but really is that how you build and grow a sustained community?
Sorry about the length of this, but I needed to vent.