Not playing the game due to raid lockouts = playing another game

[Ganak]

Roll a second character.

[Hendrik]

So let me get this straight.

You put extremely narrow restrictions on yourself like "I only want to run the Shroud" and "I only want to play one character" and then you complain that the game is too restrictive?

Correct.

Then make sweeping end-game changes to best suit this self-imposed style of play.

[diamabel]

This is not a rant post. I am just trying to explain that a change in the raid lockout system is needed in order to keep customers playing DDO and not some other game.

Right now, I do Shroud every three days. I want to TR my Monk, but not until after I reach 21 completions for Shroud so I can wear nice gear after I TR. I am not too concerned with other raid loot because most of it requires level 18+ to use. Alternate characters are not my style. This game requires a lot of dedication to one character, and TRing doesn't provide benefits to more than one character.

Basically, I am only playing the game for one hour every three days. This leaves me with a lot of free time to look at and play other games. If there were any other good MMOs to draw my attention, I would probably stop playing DDO. Fortunately for Turbine, there are no new MMOs due out in the next six months or so, and current MMOs have stale development or don't interest me. Don't get too complacent, though, because I am looking at City of Heroes with their new expansion due out next week.

I'm sure I can't be the only one in this situation. DDO attracts people who aren't dedicated to Dungeons & Dragons; I never played pen and paper DnD. I only kept playing DDO at end-game because the raiding is better than every other MMO. It can be and is frequently done with pick-up-groups instead of requiring extremely organized guilds for everything. Sure, some raids have difficult prerequisites, but once those are out of the way, doing the raid is nowhere near the frustration of World of Warcraft raids.

There must be others like me who don't play the game at all between the raid timers for the few raids they are interested in for specific items.


My suggestion:
Make a universal raid lockout timer that allows a character to do two DIFFERENT raids per day. One raid per day equates to around 1 hour of playing the game. Two raids is more reasonable and allows a person to play 2 to 3 hours per day, depending on the raids they choose to do. Currently, there are ten raids run by level 20s on a regular basis. With the current 3-day lockout, that equates to running 3.3 raids per day, which makes a universal 2-raids-per-day system more reasonable. Also, the lockout time between raiding should be around 12 hours to account for different play times during the day and the increased time it may take to do two raids instead of one.


To summarize, raid lockout timers force players to not play DDO. If you don't want people to get attracted to another game and stop paying for DDO, keep them playing as much as possible. A change in the way raid lockout timers works would help keep players in DDO while keeping them from completing their objectives too fast and getting bored with the game.


Edit: The majority of the people replying to this don't seem to like my proposal. They seem to be powergamers who have many characters and desire loot from many different raids at a time. My proposal wouldn't restrict those people as much as they claim. They would still be able to play 10 hours a day if they wanted to gear up 5 different characters. This system would greatly assist casual gamers who have time to run only 1-2 raids per day and only desire loot from a couple raids.

Your join date says 2006. Do you really have one charcater and play only one character? It's hard to believe and I get the impression that you want to simply speed up the process of getting certain items like others have mentioned.

[Zenako]

wow...says the guy with over 30 characters on a single server (3 accounts)...

Perhaps I should come up with a proposal that will vastly benefit multiple character players.

Like, you get to run X Shrouds a day based on the number of Shroud Ready characters you have, but can do it on a single character and not have to switch. So I get to run something like 10 Shrouds a day on a character (if I was so inclined to become so bored). Takes about days to get to 20 then....how does that sound.?

Seriously the current system is actually serving the game pretty well, and keeps a small sembalance of balance in play.

[Daggaz]

OP, you just made the business geeks at Turbine extremely happy. You are a paying costumer, and you only use the bare minimum of bandwidth. Thats a win-win from their viewpoint.

[Lleren]

wow...says the guy with over 30 characters on a single server (3 accounts)...

Perhaps I should come up with a proposal that will vastly benefit multiple character players.

Like, you get to run X Shrouds a day based on the number of Shroud Ready characters you have, but can do it on a single character and not have to switch. So I get to run something like 10 Shrouds a day on a character (if I was so inclined to become so bored). Takes about days to get to 20 then....how does that sound.?

Seriously the current system is actually serving the game pretty well, and keeps a small sembalance of balance in play.

I would so level more alts to 20 if I could do that!

I only have 4 Shroud ready characters now =/

[zed1]

/not signed

I hate when people who aren't really participating in end-game content seek to change it.

[cpito]

After seeing the drop rates on raid items, I have given up hope of obtaining an item I need except for on my 20th completion. I have seen Tharne's Goggles in the chest once in my ten completions of VoD. Competing with up to 80 other people (8 melees X 10 runs) for one item is horrible odds.

So you restrict yourself to one hour of play every three days to stay on shroud timer when it's just as easy to restrict yourself to two hours of play every three days to keep yourself on VoD timer too? Nobody is dictating how much you play except you, regardless of how many excuses you come up with. You are the deciding factor on if you run VoD to 20 completions. Not wanting to doesn't mean you have to never run it at all, that's solely your choice.

[Syntax42]

in one post you say you have nothing to do but 1 hours worth every 3 days and in a later post you explain if you rotate raids you have more than enough to do. so which is it?

You obviously didn't read. I was giving examples of what current raiders can do to compare to my proposed system.

A long time ago I thought I'd only ever have one toon. Some long time vets may argue with me but I would say that you do not know your toon well until you play other toons. Now certainly there is a diminishing margin of return. For instance, I don't really get a lot out of making my 8th healer or whatever, but I'm willing to bet that I know a lot more about melees after capping each type at least once. What I'm really trying to say is -- open your mind and your ass will follow.

I couldn't care less about making another character. The character I enjoy the most is the type that I will play. It takes too much time to gear up another character with the way they have raids set up currently. I'm not ignorant about the mechanics or abilities of the other classes just because I don't play them.

Powergamers will play only the raids they need items for, and will be able to get those items extremely quickly, then never do them again.

Casual players will suffer because certain raids will be hard to pug due to the lack of people running the raid and the lack of certain classes joining the raid (if there is no item there).

You won't be able to just play a raid for FUN, because doing so will LOCK you out of the other raids.

Again, someone tries to argue that powergamers will run the raid 20 times and stop running it. The only difference is they would have the option to run that raid 20 times in 20 days instead of 20 times in 60 days. That argument holds no merit. Either way, the raid only gets ran 20 times.

How many people do 6 raids every 3 days in the first place? If a powergamer collected everything they wanted from Shroud, why would they run it again? That means they WILL run other raids for fun because they are no longer locking a raid every day.

The majority is prob in the middle between us I have 15+ Capped characters between 2 accts so with what you want I would get my stuff faster and screw everyone else I would choose the 2 raids I need and not help anyone cause it screws me out of my 2 raid nty I like to help my friends even if don't need that raid.

Seriously a bad idea and like what we have

You already have the capability of running Shroud 15 times in one day. Sure you have to wait 3 days to do it again, but I bet you can probably get enough ingredients from those 15 runs to make a tier 3 greensteel item. You're complaining about this PROPOSED system as if it was proposed by the developers, when you would be affected the least by it. With 15 capped characters, you can already run any raid you want, on any day you want. You probably don't even have time to run 15 raids in a day.




It is obvious so many people think this is a bad idea. Don't support it then. Its not like the devs read these forums to decide how to change their game anyways.

[Vynnt]

Again, someone tries to argue that powergamers will run the raid 20 times and stop running it. The only difference is they would have the option to run that raid 20 times in 20 days instead of 20 times in 60 days. That argument holds no merit. Either way, the raid only gets ran 20 times.

How many people do 6 raids every 3 days in the first place? If a powergamer collected everything they wanted from Shroud, why would they run it again? That means they WILL run other raids for fun because they are no longer locking a raid every day.

One word: Ingredients. You can still get ingredients for your other characters. After you build all the GS you need, you will still run shroud for ingredients for your other characters or just cash.

Vynnt has everything he needs. I still play him because it's fun to raid with my guildies.

I have a full time job, so while i do a few raids during the week, I hit most of my raids on weekends.

[Junts]

You obviously didn't read. I was giving examples of what current raiders can do to compare to my proposed system.




I couldn't care less about making another character. The character I enjoy the most is the type that I will play. It takes too much time to gear up another character with the way they have raids set up currently. I'm not ignorant about the mechanics or abilities of the other classes just because I don't play them.




Again, someone tries to argue that powergamers will run the raid 20 times and stop running it. The only difference is they would have the option to run that raid 20 times in 20 days instead of 20 times in 60 days. That argument holds no merit. Either way, the raid only gets ran 20 times.

How many people do 6 raids every 3 days in the first place? If a powergamer collected everything they wanted from Shroud, why would they run it again? That means they WILL run other raids for fun because they are no longer locking a raid every day.




You already have the capability of running Shroud 15 times in one day. Sure you have to wait 3 days to do it again, but I bet you can probably get enough ingredients from those 15 runs to make a tier 3 greensteel item. You're complaining about this PROPOSED system as if it was proposed by the developers, when you would be affected the least by it. With 15 capped characters, you can already run any raid you want, on any day you want. You probably don't even have time to run 15 raids in a day.




It is obvious so many people think this is a bad idea. Don't support it then. Its not like the devs read these forums to decide how to change their game anyways.

The shroud provides tradable things. It is the foundation of every server's economy to trade ingredients. In the past, I have had every shroud item I wished for my characters. I still ran it on timer, becuase its the fastest source of in-game wealth.

Epic raids are similar in that epic upgrade pieces are bound to account. I run the epic dragon on characters who will never use a single item from it, because it provides shards for my other characters - and unbound, tradable red dragonscales which are an important economic resource if I don't wish to use them on one character.

Once again, you are shortsightedly damaging your play by not running other raids, who's non-epic items are more powerful than shroud items, have at times lower min levels (down to level 9) and are actually harder to get because you most pull them. Your TR would be exponentially easier if you also had some of this gear, which you refuse to get. You're harming yourself -and- everyone else with your crappy focus on one raid.

[Bilger]

You already have the capability of running Shroud 15 times in one day. Sure you have to wait 3 days to do it again, but I bet you can probably get enough ingredients from those 15 runs to make a tier 3 greensteel item. You're complaining about this PROPOSED system as if it was proposed by the developers, when you would be affected the least by it. With 15 capped characters, you can already run any raid you want, on any day you want. You probably don't even have time to run 15 raids in a day.




It is obvious so many people think this is a bad idea. Don't support it then. Its not like the devs read these forums to decide how to change their game anyways.

Not any character I want.

With your system say you want hound and VOD items on a cleric and friends need a cleric for shroud and you the only one who has one but you used that cleric in VOD and Hound so you have to tell them no I can't cause used my 2 raids up nty I like having the choice to use which character I want as long as not on timer.

People will also not brng certain classes in raids and make life more difficult to fill pugs because they don't want to waist one of there 2 raids.

I am not arguing like it is a part of the game I am arguing because you are asking for a system which is a very bad idea.

I have the right to say so and will say so even if my arguments are falling on deaf ears.

That's a differance between us I think of guildies and friends before myself and want to help them just as much as build up my characters.

The devs do read things but I am sure they see this for what it is someone wanting immediate satisfaction.

[Hokiewa]

Amusing.