Hey devs, Risia needs more slots for NPE feedback.

[Angelus_dead]

Attention developers:
You're working on getting the module 8 New Player Experience onto Risia for testing. Do you know that very many players will be unable to test it because they won't be able to make new Risia characters?

Not only are many players already at the maximum character limit on their one main server, but Risia is actually a merge of characters from every single USA server. More than anywhere else, it is likely to have accounts well over the limit.

And to make matters worse, the NPE is designed around character creation and testing builds as they level, so it's a kind of content that simply can't be explored without the ability to make many new characters.

I suspect someone might reply: "Oh it's no real problem, simply delete a bunch of Risia characters until you can eventually make a new one". Bzzt, wrong, sorry no. Telling players to delete Risia chars to make room for testing means they're crippling their future ability to test later Risia content, because they won't have the appropriate mid/high level characters to play it properly.

Of course, an alternative way to ensure Risia can be used to test NPE is to add a function to "reroll" a character slot without going through Delete->Create. But I doubt Turbine could add that in a reasonable time, while bumping up the slot limit by some big number should be an easy change (and it doesn't appear at all that someone will "take advantage" by playing on Risia a lot...!)

[Borror0]

Not to derail, but we'll also need a character update too for the high end content.

I doubt that my pre-Module 5 Borror with 53 AC will be able to do much in a level 18 quest... even less if I want to try Elite (level 20).

[Coldin]

Attention developers:
You're working on getting the module 8 New Player Experience onto Risia for testing. Do you know that very many players will be unable to test it because they won't be able to make new Risia characters?

Not only are many players already at the maximum character limit on their one main server, but Risia is actually a merge of characters from every single USA server. More than anywhere else, it is likely to have accounts well over the limit.

And to make matters worse, the NPE is designed around character creation and testing builds as they level, so it's a kind of content that simply can't be explored without the ability to make many new characters.

I suspect someone might reply: "Oh it's no real problem, simply delete a bunch of Risia characters until you can eventually make a new one". Bzzt, wrong, sorry no. Telling players to delete Risia chars to make room for testing means they're crippling their future ability to test later Risia content, because they won't have the appropriate mid/high level characters to play it properly.

Of course, an alternative way to ensure Risia can be used to test NPE is to add a function to "reroll" a character slot without going through Delete->Create. But I doubt Turbine could add that in a reasonable time, while bumping up the slot limit by some big number should be an easy change (and it doesn't appear at all that someone will "take advantage" by playing on Risia a lot...!)

Well, people should get at least 1 extra character slot on Risia. And yes, people can just delete characters off Risia. It's a test server. None of those characters really matter. People don't really need 10 different high level characters to properly test Risia content.

It's not the best solution, but it is a solution nonetheless.

I'd much rather have a way to just fully bring any character from Level 1 to Cap. I think that would be much more helpful to the testing process, plus it would give players a way to test how effective is leveling along a "Path".

[Angelus_dead]

Not to derail, but we'll also need a character update too for the high end content.

That brings up a different potential fix, which other games have used: a web page where a customer can select a character for copying to a test server. The copy wouldn't be instantaneous- it would happen only when the devs feel like getting around to it- but it would mitigate many problems with getting accurate characters on Risia.

I suspect that MANY of the flaws seen in new high-level content were caused by inaccurate testing characters. I mainly mean the tendency of some newly-launch high level quests to be too easily beatable by lower-level characters. That happened bigtime with Prison of the Planes in mod 4. And when Module 5 came out, the devs seriously hadn't expected players to be able to tough it out and keep fighting in the middle of Inferno.

[Ringos]

That brings up a different potential fix, which other games have used: a web page where a customer can select a character for copying to a test server. The copy wouldn't be instantaneous- it would happen only when the devs feel like getting around to it- but it would mitigate many problems with getting accurate characters on Risia.

I suspect that MANY of the flaws seen in new high-level content were caused by inaccurate testing characters. I mainly mean the tendency of some newly-launch high level quests to be too easily beatable by lower-level characters. That happened bigtime with Prison of the Planes in mod 4. And when Module 5 came out, the devs seriously hadn't expected players to be able to tough it out and keep fighting in the middle of Inferno.

Good idea.

[Angelus_dead]

And yes, people can just delete characters off Risia. It's a test server. None of those characters really matter. People don't really need 10 different high level characters to properly test Risia content.

Wrong, as I already was careful to explain.

There are 10 classes in DDO, and 16 levels, and not very many players on the Risia server, even right after an update. If they come out with a level 18 raid and we'd like to test if Monk jumping can skip the puzzles, it'll be very hard to find a character who can do that, because monks are rare. If we'd like to test if Ooze Puppet + Control Undead can break the scripting, it'll be hard to find a wizard to do that if people have deleted their non-sorc mages to get more slots. And just in general, building an effective party to accurately test a quest of unknown level and unknown obstacles will be very hard if you need to delete a mid/high level character just to test some lowbie aspect.

I'd much rather have a way to just fully bring any character from Level 1 to Cap. I think that would be much more helpful to the testing process

No. As has already been explained, a high-level character without high-level gear is not at all an accurate way to test high-level content. The character's abilities simply aren't anywhere close to an accurate example of what a real player will use.

[Coldin]

Wrong, as I already was careful to explain.

There are 10 classes in DDO, and 16 levels, and not very many players on the Risia server, even right after an update. If they come out with a level 18 raid and we'd like to test if Monk jumping can skip the puzzles, it'll be very hard to find a character who can do that, because monks are rare. If we'd like to test if Ooze Puppet + Control Undead can break the scripting, it'll be hard to find a wizard to do that if people have deleted their non-sorc mages to get more slots. And just in general, building an effective party to accurately test a quest of unknown level and unknown obstacles will be very hard if you need to delete a mid/high level character just to test some lowbie aspect.

Yes, there is a chance some things like ooze puppet and control undead being used together would cause some world crashing bug. But really A_D, do you honestly think your average Risia tester is going to even try weird combinations like that?

Secondly, building an ideal party to test a quest is not really needed. You might need a cleric, caster, and a trap buster, but that's only 3 slots right there you'd need to save.

As far as testing other classes, I doubt most people have capped character of every class to begin with. Giving more slots would probably do little to fix that too.

No. As has already been explained, a high-level character without high-level gear is not at all an accurate way to test high-level content. The character's abilities simply aren't anywhere close to an accurate example of what a real player will use.

The devs could make a way to get randomly generated loot (or heck, even raid or named loot) for characters of all levels. They probably already have some tools in place to do that anyway. But that wasn't the point of my suggestion anyway. Creating a character and leveling to cap can be a good way of finding issues with the interface or with certain abilities. How that character performs in quests is a second concern.

Btw A_D, I like how you respond with simple and straightforward negatives.


Edit: Btw, I'm not against adding more slots to Risia. If the devs feel they can easily do it, then by all means, add a bunch of extra slots. But it is by no means "needed".