Will DDO see EPIC LEVELS?

[honkuimushi]

I would like to add that Epic levels would be a perfect basis for an expansion set. That is if Turbine can ever do anything about Atari.

[CDevil]

This question goes squarely to the high-ups at Turbine. I request one of the devs to address this question clearly, for all DDOdom.

<Sneaks up quietly behind him, whispers in his ear>
"Yes, we will."

<Slips a knife between his ribs into his heart, coup de grace>
"But YOU won't be around to see it.

<Resheathes the blade and slips away into the night...>

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

<Sneaks up quietly behind him, whispers in his ear>
"Yes, we will."

<Slips a knife between his ribs into his heart, coup de grace>
"But YOU won't be around to see it.

<Resheathes the blade and slips away into the night...>

<Aandre smells the rancid-ness of something that hasnt bathed in years... then hears something clink & clank, sort of like a foolish noob rogue trying to sneak up behind me in full plate armor. Aande felt a small point in the middle of his back, which reminded him of what it was like being tickled before the day he needed to don his first Adamantine full plate. Aandre immediately clicks his rage clickie, turns around, while raising his +2 holy burst greataxe of pure good above his head in ALL it's glory... and sees a drow rogue wimpering on his knees in the corner of the room, definitely looking like he needs a ..... diaper change....>

Aandre whispers in his left ear... I was only wielding a candy cane, you can get up now....

[Mindspat]

If you're playing a character that you claim was leveled from 1 up to 20 I suspect you're playing in a campaign setting which we used to refer as "Monty Hall".

The bolded statement is completely ridiculous.

I ran a PnP game that started at level 1 and ran to level 20. The weapons that the PCs were using towards the end were largely inferior to the weapons that DDO had back when the cap was 10, and we had a resurrection variant where permanent death was a possibility.

I have no idea why your campaigns died after level 7-8. Maybe you just had particularly brutal campaigns. Or perhaps you were playing in 2nd edition, where leveling up took a ridiculously long time once you got to 7-8 (if this is the case, then I suggest that you look into the 3rd edition XP system to see how it works before making such statements about other people's campaigns).

The pot calling the kettle black? Hint: I started playing D&D around 1981.

See my subsequent post regarding a truely "epic" means of game play that's not level centric. Attempting to maintain growth through the addition of "levels" is a bane to this game which will ammount to an *Epic* failure.

I'll help you out: "Want to know what I would like? End Game Dynamics based upon readily availble consumables; make the +2 ghosttouch large shield of lesser fire resitence have purpose ******! Allow us to build Fortresses, Castles and Keeps to be maintained by the "phat lewt" we've acquired on our journies. Permit Henchmen to take form and create a dynamic environment of castle raids and random boss encounters. Make my Castle degrade from lack of funding - make it crumble when the onslaught of Fire Giants come for their revenge. This is the type of content which would keep many of us enthralled for ages!"

[Brutalirony]

I second that!

[cpampine]

(and one of the most useful spells they could put it would be wish yes, they don't seem to think we either would use limited wish, or they don't know how to put it in so theres no chance of wish showing up.)

Implementation of wish is impossible in a game where direct DM participation does not exist!

[dragnmoon]

Implementation of wish is impossible in a game where direct DM participation does not exist!

In the past they said they would not implement Wish, but the latest is that they are looking into a implementation of wish in the game... I am sure it will be limited in it's form since Wish is so wide range of a spell.

from a TenTonhammer Interview with Kate Paiz & Stephen Muray of Turbine on Dec 4th

Ten Ton Hammer: As you continually increase the level cap, are you ever going to run into spells that don’t necessarily fit into your world? Like, for instance, the Wish spell?

Steve: I actually have a few ideas on how to implement the Wish spell. It’s likely that when we run into a conflict between the needs of an MMO and that of the pen-and-paper game, we’ll make some modifications in order to make things work.

By the way... On Epic levels... This was also in the interview

Ten Ton Hammer: What are your long-term goals for Dungeons and Dragons Online?

Kate: We have three main focuses. One is to continue to develop the D&D experience. We’re looking at prestige classes. We’re looking at epic levels. Even other classes from the Eberron setting are fair game, like the Artificer perhaps for the ’09 release year.

We also want to continue polishing what we have. Continue to iterate on the most critical systems in our library. We’ve already introduced a ton of new aspects, but we want to continue the process in finding which adventures people enjoy and adding more of those type of scenarios into the game.

Finally, we want to simply add more of the core game experience into DDO. Crafting is just going to start rolling at the beginning of 2008. We can’t give away too many more details, but we just want the players to know that we’re going to continue to work on the game because we really love this game and this community and want to bring as many cool things to the experience as possible.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

Finally, we want to simply add more of the core game experience into DDO. Crafting is just going to start rolling at the beginning of 2008. We can’t give away too many more details, but we just want the players to know that we’re going to continue to work on the game because we really love this game and this community and want to bring as many cool things to the experience as possible.

I think this is maybe the most satisfying and hopeful official comment I've heard out of all the others. Turbine's recognition and gratitude towards the game AND our community sounds very refreshing after the well known Asheron's Call fiasco, and should go a long way with many of the DDO paying populous.

[cpampine]

I think this is maybe the most satisfying and hopeful official comment I've heard out of all the others. Turbine's recognition and gratitude towards the game AND our community sounds very refreshing after the well known Asheron's Call fiasco, and should go a long way with many of the DDO paying populous.

QFT

[Seneca_Windforge]

The pot calling the kettle black? Hint: I started playing D&D around 1981.

See my subsequent post regarding a truely "epic" means of game play that's not level centric. Attempting to maintain growth through the addition of "levels" is a bane to this game which will ammount to an *Epic* failure.

I'll help you out: "Want to know what I would like? End Game Dynamics based upon readily availble consumables; make the +2 ghosttouch large shield of lesser fire resitence have purpose ******! Allow us to build Fortresses, Castles and Keeps to be maintained by the "phat lewt" we've acquired on our journies. Permit Henchmen to take form and create a dynamic environment of castle raids and random boss encounters. Make my Castle degrade from lack of funding - make it crumble when the onslaught of Fire Giants come for their revenge. This is the type of content which would keep many of us enthralled for ages!"

The thing is, what you said in your later post doesn't necessarily sound bad (though it does sound somewhat impractical to implement). However, when you make such a ridiculous blanket statement such as "I suspect anyone who levels up from 1 to 20 is playing a Monty Haul game" you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. My entire group would laugh at you if you suggested that our 2003 campaign was "Monty Haul" just because we started at level 1 and ended at (approximately) 20 and I daresay that we're not in some sort of minority. In case you've never played a 3rd edition campaign...leveling up does not slow down much as you gain levels. Encounters, particularly combat encounters, take more real time to resolve, so it takes longer to get the 13.33 on-level encounters needed to level up (if you use the book XP rules), but you don't have the crazy-long wait between levels like you did in previous editions.

Personally, I would never play epic levels with the 3.5 ruleset in a tabletop game -- the game just bogs down way too much; heck, it bogs down a lot when you start to hit 13th or so. I'm not sure how well they'd work out for DDO, but either way, I suspect that it won't even be an issue for another year or more anyway.

[PhoenixRajoNight]

What I read in interviews is that they want to, but they stopped short of making any promises. Realistically, they have at least a year before it becomes an issue. We'll get level 16 soon, probably in January, then i would expect 18 six months later, at the earliest. Level 20 shouldn't take that long since there are no new spell levels. But I'm still thinking that we won't hit level 20 until next December. That's about the time I would expect to hear more concrete things about epic levels. I'm thinking it would be June 2009 before we would actually see them.

I hope they don't take the level system from 4.0. It's still a new system and while adding a few things that have been improved might be a nice touch, this system was based on 3.5 and trying to shoehorn it into a 4.0 system would be a mistake.

Actually if you look at it this game(ddo) is more based on what 4.0 is going to be.

Q: What happened with 3.0? and why did 3.5 happen?
A: Well they wanted to change alot of DnD and had alot of ideas but unfortunately 3.5 happened because alot in the new way of doing things were, well, unbalanced so we made 3.5 to correct that.

Q: What Is 4.0?
A: 4.0 is what they wanted 3.0 to be but they didn't want to make a drastic change that would lose alot of players of 2nd ed. What they wanted to do is make it so characters grow more into there classes and races instead of just starting bonus's like +2 dex -2 con, immune to sleep effects etc etc for elves and then nothing, and instead of set paths with the classes and little customization they want players to grow more into their characters(sound anything like the enhancements we have in ddo?). There is also suppose to be a huge change in the magic/casters system(spellpoints maybe?) and psionic classes are becoming main book classes(which makes it easier to see the spellpoints being the change since psionics have been using power points. From things I've read and gathered ddo is really a testing ground for DnD's PnP 4.0, things like I've mentioned here.

[Taojeff]

Actually if you look at it this game(ddo) is more based on what 4.0 is going to be.

Q: What happened with 3.0? and why did 3.5 happen?
A: Well they wanted to change alot of DnD and had alot of ideas but unfortunately 3.5 happened because alot in the new way of doing things were, well, unbalanced so we made 3.5 to correct that.

Q: What Is 4.0?
A: 4.0 is what they wanted 3.0 to be but they didn't want to make a drastic change that would lose alot of players of 2nd ed. What they wanted to do is make it so characters grow more into there classes and races instead of just starting bonus's like +2 dex -2 con, immune to sleep effects etc etc for elves and then nothing, and instead of set paths with the classes and little customization they want players to grow more into their characters(sound anything like the enhancements we have in ddo?). There is also suppose to be a huge change in the magic/casters system(spellpoints maybe?) and psionic classes are becoming main book classes(which makes it easier to see the spellpoints being the change since psionics have been using power points. From things I've read and gathered ddo is really a testing ground for DnD's PnP 4.0, things like I've mentioned here.

I have read they are nixing Bards, Barbarians, and Druids

Spells no longer have durations other then per encounter or per day. Ritual spell are gone (no more raise dead). Every class has per day and per encounter abilities as well as some form of healing. There is a book out that details some of the changes, I am going to go look for it this weekend and I will post some of the stuff.

[MysticTheurge]

There is a book out that details some of the changes, I am going to go look for it this weekend and I will post some of the stuff.

Or you could just check here.