The BIGGEST thing you would add/change about the game.

[Furysetzer]

When I place something in my inventory, such as a weapon, I would like it to go back into that EXACT SPOT when I switch to something different. Clothing and jewelry do it. Why not weapons?

I would love that. More than I can say.

I can definitely agree with this. It's painful when you're done with selling from a loot run, and have to reorganize your backpack every time.

I would implement a non-grind way of getting yourself a meaningfull AC in the endgame.


To me having to give up 2 item sots, 2 or 3 feats, redistributing build stats and having to grind raids and rare loot droops. Only to get your AC up to where it starts making a difference?

No, sorry.

Definitely. My original 28 pt fighter has about 40 something AC(wasn't really paying attention to it when I started), and takes about as much damage as a barbarian with no AC. Doesn't make sense, but it's true.

[Rightousdude]

Make the game fun for everyone. Make it possible to play endgame without playing a 20+ hours per week to get loot needed. Bind high end items to get rid of the proffesional plat farmers and make the game playable without grinding out the same quests over and over to get gear. Let you give it to those in your party maybe mail it one time to your own account. Have bloodstones and spell storing rings everywere in the desert, Girds everywere in house J, not just in one chest, at lower percentage chances of course.
If you get a rune on a particular tune in the refuge, you should recongnize it if you see it again.
I actually like the refugee area, no plat farmers.
Make the combat tables, feats, and enhancements so the best toons reflect the genre. The best barbs and Palis should not be duel wielding Wop rapiers.
It is a fun game, but anything to end the grinding of a few quests, while ignoring 80% of the content.

[gelgoog]

since this game has a good combat system i would like to see more customization of this.

1) being able to change your attack animations. they would be restricted to your dex or str modifiers. So at least not everyone using melee would look the same swinging there weapons around (its like we all went to the same dojo to learn how to fight the way it is now).

2) stunning blow, improved trip, improved sunder, etc, all should have a distinct attack animation with a distinct yell from your character.

3) using a shield as an attack in your attack chain. you would have to have certain feats to aquire this. also using the shield as an attack has a 5% chance to stun opponent while in an attack chain.

4) grappling. only useable by high strength characters. a way to do this is have an attack feat which would be a grapple attack. then if you succed in the attack you would have a selection(like some wrestling games) of moves you can do to your opponent. (body slam, throw, choke, "as you progress with your ftr,pal,barb level the feats get stronger" break neck, impale enemy on your weapon and such).

i enjoy the combat system in this game immensely. but they is room for much improvement to acheive a new level in real time combat in an mmo.

i've played many mmos but always come back to ddo mainly for it's unique combat system. i use the xbox360 controller and get very bored with point and click mmos.

just my two coppers
/shrug

[Angelus_dead]

I understand why you are doing this and I agree it needs to be addressed but I don't like doing this...

Note1: I'm not suggesting this as something that can be changed now; just as a choice that could've been made before launch.
Note2: To be more specific, my suggestion would allow exchange of items within the party:
1. If the character was in your party when you obtained the item, you may give it to him permanently. (And if you cash it in with an NPC, he can buy it). Effectively, that means items can be bound to up to 12 character IDs. (Possibly, the extra IDs expire after a week)
2. If the character is in your party right now, he may use your things as long as you remain in the same party.

Note3: Also something could be done regarding transfer of plat, but that's even more complicated to acceptably restrict.

Do you bind on equip would reduce the problem to a more acceptable degree

That's a tough question. It might actually make things worse!
Bind on Equip would still mean that lowbie alts would have a good supply of non-rare items waiting for them... only the special things like +2 rr mith fp would be mostly absence from the twink scene. However, currently it isn't hard for new players to have fairly advanced items given to them, helping them catch up. That might stop if trading is arbitrarily ended after 1 previous user (instead of 0 previous users, which is what BOA means)

[Uska]

I like the lottery system of random loot but the biggest changes I would do.

1. remove enhancements

2. remove green steel

3. reduce mob hp

[Aesop]

I like the lottery system of random loot but the biggest changes I would do.

1. remove enhancements

2. remove green steel

3. reduce mob hp

Don't forget Dodge Items to AC

[doppleganger]

hummm that's a tough one, so many things I would like to see changed. I will summarize it by saying: GET RID OF THE ANNOYANCES!!!! I'll list a few that came up quick:

1) regarding the difficulty level at which we can open quests/raids, have that be unlocked at the account level rather than character level (If I have a toon that did Proof is in the Poison Elite, all my other toons can now open it at Elite right away too). This would diminish big time the annoyance of having to load a toon that has already done the quest and then switch toon again. Get rid of the annoyances.

2) dont ever put again stupid mechanism of: "if you talk to the quest giver and take the quest again,you are screwing up your quest chain big time" like happens in the bloody crypt, shadow crypt and threnal series.
Get rid of annoyances.

3) dont ever put again a pure lottery crafting system like you have done with dragontouched armor. All this does is discourage a lot of players from trying to craft the armor. Those quests would be run way much more if there was a sentiment that players are actually progressing toward their goal, like for shroud crafting. Oh and for the love of god, when you introduce a system of crafting and grinding like that, please make all items look good (geez I hate the leather armor), and give it a kick ass look, not some baby blue powder look! Get rid of annoyances.

4) clean up all the **** loot from the old raids! How come I have pretty much all the items I want after 20 hound runs, and have difficulty even getting one nice item after 20 titan runs? I know, I know, there is much less loot items in the hound, and that is partly my point by the way. Remove the junk from the old raids please. Get rid of annoyances.

[Aesop]

Oh Oh how about this one too.

Remove Stupid Flagging Mechanics from the Reaver Refuge area.

Flag once and done.

People rerun those quests to get the Runes anyway why make it so we HAVE to Run them everytime we want to frag the Lich


Aesop

[branmakmuffin]

Oh and for the love of god, when you introduce a system of crafting and grinding like that, please make all items look good (geez I hate the leather armor), and give it a kick ass look, not some baby blue powder look! Get rid of annoyances.

As I've written before, this can only be explained by the artists/designers putting forth deliberate effort to make gear look as ugly and goofy as possibly. There's no way the game ends up with so much gawd-awful looking gear across the board by accident. It's almost like they're saying "The better performing your character's gear is, the uglier it's going to be, and that's just the way it is, so there. "

Remove the junk from the old raids please.

Then you'd get nothing.

[Uska]

Don't forget Dodge Items to AC

yeah those should vanish to.

[Aesop]

yeah those should vanish to.

In a fine red mist

[jboyd158]

Another nice thing to have would be alternate class features. (And cold rage. I wantsa RAGEMAGE!)
(A list is on the SRD)

[Furysetzer]

I'd release Halforcs and Druids!!

True story: my wife won't play this game because they don't have druids. It was her pnp staple when she played it.

1) regarding the difficulty level at which we can open quests/raids, have that be unlocked at the account level rather than character level (If I have a toon that did Proof is in the Poison Elite, all my other toons can now open it at Elite right away too). This would diminish big time the annoyance of having to load a toon that has already done the quest and then switch toon again. Get rid of the annoyances.

I like this one. It would make gaining favor a lot easier on each character you have.

1. remove enhancements

My god why would you do this? It's the only good thing about this game keeping all characters from being the same.

[Aesop]

True story: my wife won't play this game because they don't have druids. It was her pnp staple when she played it.

A few of my Friends won't come back til Druids show up... os I understand


My god why would you do this? It's the only good thing about this game keeping all characters from being the same.


To be honest I find the current (and former) Enhancement Systems to be a control mechanism that is designed to limit our own ability to create characters. I've argues this in the past, and I feel that, while I don't mind AN Enhancement System, I would vastly perfer one based on how you build your character. Using Skill Ranks, Feats, Race and Class Features as the primary control for what Enhancements are available; not how many Levels in a specific Class you have.

Aesop

[Accelerando]

Don't forget Dodge Items to AC

yeah those should vanish to.

QFT. Remove dodge items, they should not exist. Then drop mob to hit drastically,
and give them all FE: Ranger and FE:Monk

[GlassCannon]

Multiclassing mechanics.

Details: AC/Saves/Feat rebalancing and an XP penalty for a tripleclass or off-racial multiclass(i.e., a Halfling Cleric/Ranger).

Spalshes would gain a % bonus for their splash in regards to the Paladin Saves for Charisma, Monk AC for Wisdom, and as has been already done, Spellpoint Bonuses for Sorc levels.

As for Feats, a Fighter splash would garner one feat instead of 2. They would get the additional feat at Fighter 3, and the next bonus feats would hit at fighter 5, 6, 7, 8 to line them up with other Fighters. This would work the same with all racial bonus feats, being granted later instead of at level 1. Additionally, if the first level had a bonus feat applied and 10 levels of another class were taken, the bonus feat would be stripped. Said stripped feat could be reaquired through 2 additional levels in that initial class. Attribute it to forgetfulness within calamity.

[Dark_Helmet]

i would eliminate Atari from the equation.

Second would be get rid of the management making stupid decisions (usally Devs will come up with ideas, but the management approves/disapproves the implementation).

Get back to the PnP rules (no enhancements, no inflated HPs, etc, so monsters can go back to what they should be!). The only deviations should be when they can't implement the rules in a computer game (wish is a good example).

Oh yeah, learn how to QA (scripting simulations to test most permutations isn't that hard when you start building a library of them).

[Aesop]

Multiclassing mechanics.

Details: AC/Saves/Feat rebalancing and an XP penalty for a tripleclass or off-racial multiclass(i.e., a Halfling Cleric/Ranger).

Spalshes would gain a % bonus for their splash in regards to the Paladin Saves for Charisma, Monk AC for Wisdom, and as has been already done, Spellpoint Bonuses for Sorc levels.

As for Feats, a Fighter splash would garner one feat instead of 2. They would get the additional feat at Fighter 3, and the next bonus feats would hit at fighter 5, 6, 7, 8 to line them up with other Fighters. This would work the same with all racial bonus feats, being granted later instead of at level 1. Additionally, if the first level had a bonus feat applied and 10 levels of another class were taken, the bonus feat would be stripped. Said stripped feat could be reaquired through 2 additional levels in that initial class. Attribute it to forgetfulness within calamity.

Wow ... thanks for this.

It proves something I've wondered for a long time


Aesop

[Lorien_the_First_One]

Go back to the original theme on the DDO box of "no grinding, no travelling to quests"

[winsom]

DDO is still fun or I wouldn't bother writing about it or playing it every now and then, but it still has great problems that I pretty much sum up into the one thing that needs to be fixed:

The power imbalance of us vs. the monsters

We have it "Too Easy" & in response the monsters & encounters are designed to "Cheat" as a substitute for more interesting forms of challenge.

I often hear people talk about how DDO combat is fun. I agree. However what I think a lot of players are slow to realize is just how crazy-fast our characters move and attack relative to our monster opponents. Monster AI is already weak compared to humans. When Human controlled characters are also given a super-advantage in attack speed then this recipe for game imbalance should have been clearer to the original DDO devs. Just watch how many times a low level unhastened character can swing a weapon compared to how often the monster fights back. Its not even close to fair. D&D is not supposed to be that way.

If the intention was to have our characters attack extremely fast (to look/feel cool) then the damage numbers/buffs/additions from D&D items and spells needed to be greatly-reduced from the D&D numbers. Consider how STR damage bonus plus all other damage bonuses plus elemental damage, etc,are summed on every single melee hit and this all adds up very very quickly due to attack speed differences compared to the monsters. This DPS imbalance would definitely create a problem when trying to design content to challenge our super-heroes.. Turbine unfortunately stuck to this game design approach and a lot of times resulting challenge feels very artificial to me: much more of an artificial game design than the original D&D combat is, if that makes sense. Turbine makes monsters immune to things as artificial challenge and monsters have increasingly-super hit points, and often super attack values too, etc., Our character armor class is not worth as much as it would be in real D&D and yet our attack speed and accuracy is insanely good compared to D&D. A lot of things add up to create this #1 problem that I see.

Turbine broke the D&D game in several important ways at the start and many of the changes and fixes and nerfs since then only ended up breaking the game in a lot of new ways. Turbine has made plenty of positive improvements to this game, but they never fixed the big mistake that I saw from the beginning.

Some examples:

Consider how giants in DDO are animated as big lumbering opponents that do sometimes do stomp attacks rather than more punishing attacks. Consider how slow the large giants attack. It might make them look "cool" in an ineffectual sort-of way, but once you go and fight ogres in other parts of the game you should realize that ogres are a lot more dangerous than their larger cousins mostly because they attack a heck of a lot faster. Giants in D&D attack at least as often as D&D characters do and usually more often ! This makes them really dangerous and that makes for a fun experience when I know I'm going to be fighting against that kind of peril.

Why is it so easy to run away from monsters in DDO ?

Even at low levels before striding and haste, it is possible to run through/past content. Why is that allowed? In D&D that would definitely get characters killed. When magical forms of movement and defenses are added it is no surprise that every level of dungeon in DDO can be sprinted and leaped through in the most seemingly-reckless fashion, but in reality it is more effective to run around monsters, exploiting these speed and AI differences, than to fight them more similar to how it would be done in D&D.

Monsters are compensated with lots of things that D&D monsters would Not have, but the compensation is not appropriately balancing. I.e. if our characters attack extremely fast and accurate relative to monsters, it is not a fair compensation to simply give the monsters more Hit Points. That is partly what Turbine did to try to compensate. I don't think that was a good solution, quite the opposite.

Some magic items are VERY over-powered when compared to other high power items.

I am all in favor of there being great loots to find. I loved looting in Diablo 2 as well. But the problem in DDO is how these super-class of items become obligatory for DDO game-play and this in turn molds how future dungeon content is created for us. I am not only talking about raid loot like Green steel, as overpowered as much of that is. Some other low level items have a very profound impact on how DDO is played.

Turbine had complete control over how uber they wanted items to be. I think their mistake came from originally planning for a level 20 game and designing content for levels post 10th. This design might have at one time been more similar to what we would expect from D&D power levels, but then the level cap was cut in half and I believe the content remained unchanged. So now level 10 characters have to be powerful enough to take on what was originally intended for level 16+ characters..

I think the decision was made to cap at 10th level at some point prior to retail release but after significant work had already been done on level 11+ content. Turbine must have decided it would be too much work to re-do a lot of the higher level adventures to accommodate for a lower level. So what I guess they did is increase the power our characters have at levels approaching 10th, while keeping extremely potent monsters in the game that are really not appropriate challenges for level 10 characters...

Do you think they originally intended level 8 characters to have +5 weapon ? I doubt it. This was probably intended for 16th level, but then the level cap dropped from 20 to 10 and along with it all magic items level limits were cut in half. Does the Tempest Spine adventure really seem appropriate for a level 10 adventure? I don't think so. It was likely intended for higher level DDO characters, but then the decision was made to cap levels at 10th. Tempest Spine was already designed, so it turned it into a level 10 adventure with creatures and CRs that only level 14+ characters in D&D should be fighting This type of retrofitting a planned for higher level DDO to match the level 10 cap had extensive effects throughout the rest of the game's designs. That is how DDO turned into the super-uber monster and magic items game we know today.


Permanent spell-effects

should never have appeared on an item of less than epic-scale and perhaps never at all. Consider how much Striding, Water Breathing, Feather Falling and various Immunity items have forever altered how dungeon content and monster challenges must be designed. Sometimes these items create fun quest designs, such as falling and swimming through areas, but this same fun could be accomplished with temporary effects/charges from items or from the dungeon/shrine itself rather than appearing as permanent item features.

If items with permanent spell effects are to exist they should never have a second power on the same item. If they are "too good" alone, then they are definitely much too good when they come as Poison Immunity + Greater False Life or Death block + anything else.

Heavy Fortification is extremely good.

Too good because monsters do not have any ability to penetrate the 100% critical hit immunity. Moderate Fort should have been the limit. When heavy fort is combined with another potent enchantment like +20 HP or Death block we end up with an even greater imbalanced magic item. The Minos Legens Helm is so good that most characters use them to the point of never considering any of the other "lesser power" helmet items.

Green steel Weaponry should never have been implemented

Supreme damage additions, exceptional additions to attributes, high power on-hit effects, and multiple benefits (i.e. way too many powers per item slot) make GS weaponry a tragic mistake for DDO. They could have been attractive to players if they were a lot less powerful. Players really only wanted the ability to craft their own magic weapons rather relying on random chests. Turbine gave us one better with Green steel: now almost all random-loot AND other raid-loot weaponry is too weak when compared to green steel.

Green steel non-weapons are very potent, and often over-powered (i.e. Mineral II), but not nearly as much as the weaponry.