My Expectations of a New Player

[Aranticus]

the divide between the vet (i'm not referring to the pseudo vets who think their 2 shoud runs qualify them to be an authority) and the newbie is widening and its horrifying how big this divide is at present. a lot of the misunderstanding stems from both misconception and miscommunication. this thread maybe ugly, i may get neg repped but it has to be said. if you are a new player and at the end of this post you think "boy this aranticus <insert insult> is an elitist" then you are realising something and that is the truth. the truth is honest and brutal, i'm not going to pretend that i'm some politician and be PC about it here. as to the vets, chip in with your own perceptions as well so that the new players may know what its really like out there

1. perception
many people have the wrong concept that ddo is a game and must therefore be fun first. according to maslow theory of needs, each of us have a need. the need of a casual player is very different from a powergamer. the need of a new player is also different from a vet. a lot of new players thing number crunching powergamers are elitists that do not have fun.

this is a wrong perception. they are having fun, in their own way. their fun isnt about running lost in a quest, dropping into lava and holding their breath or poking at the dragon's rear end waiting for an explosive fart. a powergamer's interest is in acquiring the best gear possible and gunning for seemingly impossible feats of soloing, speed, etc. a newbie may find that the slow exploration of a quest, with the rogue scouting ahead for traps and foes, the caster in the back preparing a counterspell, etc fun. that has long since been removed from the minds of many experienced players. and the reason is they do not need to smell the flowers along the path for the 2486274th time

2. build
balance and min-maxing is an often misunderstood concept. new players generally thing of balance as something which allows them to meet new things head on and be prepared by means of spreading out the abilities and that min-maxing is something that implies the maxing of certain abilities at the expense of others

balance works real well at the lower levels as the encounters are less deadly and the ddo numbers ie to hit, damage, AC, are low enough not to be of concern. this gives new players the perception that what works at L4 must work at L10 and at L20. in reality, ddo is not a proportional game. a boss at L4 may have 500 hp, at L10 it may have 2000 hp and probably 500000 at L20. balance begins to lose focus and you will find that being specialised will actually make you perform better. this is where min-maxing comes about

min-maxing is not maxing an ability at the expense of others. min-maxing is about the maxing of an important attribute while suppressing those that are not utilised. a balanced fighter in they eyes of a new player could be one with a decent dps, nice ac, good saves all combined together. for a min-maxer, its totally different. they will take the environment into consideration and plan accordingly

consider a boss fight where the boss has a to hit of 70. a new player will load up on a shield, protection item, barkskin and think his AC of 60 rocks. unfortunately in this case, it doesnt. the boss will still only need a roll of 2 to hit. this means all that load doesnt serve a purpose! the min-maxer will use thf/twf (no shield), lose all that AC gear and load up with guard items which inflicts damage back. you are still getting hit the same amount of times but is dealing an exponetially greater amount of damage

the same can be applied to other aspects such as stat (cha and int is not really important to a barb, higher str and con is better). note that min-maxing is really to max out your best attribute by not heeding the other aspects which are not going to factor much in performance

3. attitude
learn! this is the best advice i can give any new player. there are a lot of resources out here which i didnt have when i was starting out. if you are already here, read them. if you see people asking, refer them. in quest do not be afraid to ask questions (of course please limit it to the intelligent ones ie why is a scimitar a better weapon for an elf than a longsword?" not "can i haz ya lutz?")

be unafraid to admit you are new. raid leaders want 100% success as much as possible and if you are new, they wont skip some important instructions. however, you must also know where you stand. if you are new, joining a quest/raid you have not done before on hard or elite is just asking for it. joining a lfm with "in progress", "byoh" (just in case you do not know, it means bring your own heals), "be sufficient", "zerg run", "speed" are also asking for it. in all these runs, the leader is expecting you to be knowledgable about the quest/raid and will not bother with helping you learn it

be humble. when the group leader tells you that a certain thing needs to be done, sure you can ask why but follow. many quests/raid completion runs are quite established and usually the best tried and tested method, more importantly, its about communication. if you do something differently, it may have a negative impact. if someone tells you that you need more hp, give us a break, dun tell us your 150 hp at L20 is enough. we know what is enough and 150 hp is not enough unless you are one of the top 5 players with enough skills to pull it off

4. equipment
some playes are scrooges and will save a ton of plat up and not spend a single dime. this is just asking for trouble. status removal and healing pots are typically the least anyone should have. its is your own character, to expect others to keep you on your feet just shows how irresponsible you are. you may say "but that is what the cleric is for!" so what happens if the clr happens to be healing another party member and may not attend to you immediately? what happens if you need the clr to keep removing your disease that no sp is left for heals?

gear wise, find out what is needed. in general, a vorpal, smiter, disrupter, paralyser and a metalline of pure good/holy silver/metalline flametouched iron/etc will serve you well for most quests/raids. heavy fortification and hp items are important as well. read the trade channel or server marketplace threads to see what people are WTB. this generally give you an indication that an item may be important

5. PnP
ditch whatever you learn in PnP. DDO is a whole new world. my DDO fighter has 700 buff hp, 70 str, 70 AC. i'm an equivalent of a PnP god. lots of things in PnP doesnt work the same way in DDO. lots of things are specific to DDO and not found in PnP. most vets do not really care if you have 20 yrs of PnP experience. take michael jordan for example. he plays basketball well and have 6 championship rings. he takes on baseball and golf and we all know how well those went

6. MMO
yes DDO is another MMO but there is a lot of difference from many other games out there. one of the biggest difference is the community. not many MMOs are able to survive a lean period of almost 2 years of negligible content updates, absence of communication, closure of cousin servers by respectives game providers (just in case you may not know, its shanda and codemasters) in china and europe. the level of customisation in the game in terms of character development is also seldom seen in other MMOs. like other games, the holy trinity of tank, healer, caster roles is also present in DDO. however, the roles are not limited to a few classes but rather by how the player plans and build a character, ie in DDO, its possible to have a tanking wizard. so what does all these boil down to? you could be a MMO vet with 10 years, played a dozen games but what you have learnt in the other games doesnt necessarily mean you are the authority on DDO.

7. experience
i've seen a lot of players in general chat giving advice or bragging to people. if you have gotten to L20 on 1 toon, it doesnt mean you are automatically a "vet". having played many other games, it is almost impossible to reach the highest levels without a good understanding of the games. in DDO, all this break down. the level of difficulty these days have been dumbed down by a huge margin. it is very possible for someone to join a group and get a completion without the person actually contributing anything. do not be fooled into thinking that 10 completions you have must make you an authority on shroud. i have ran with paladins who insist that their +3 holy bastard sword of maiming is better than the holy sword. there are players who swear that only mass heal should be the only acceptable healing spell, gawd, how did we managed to complete elite shroud when the cap was 16? there are casters that think that web is useless in vision of destruction. some are still in denial that the only acceptable healer in raids are clerics and favored souls

i reiterate again, having X raid completions or Y toons with Z true reincarnations doesnt mean you are an experienced player. i'm on khyber server, there are a few players who have TRed multiple times and are still avoided by the majority of the veteran players. in fact they are sometimes mocked at with multiple players lfm on the same raid. so when will you join the ranks of the vets? its really simple, when the better guilds acknowledge that you are one, you made it. how so? usually, the key indicators are how fast your raids fill, how quickly you get accepted into a raid, or if they send you a guild invite

in summary, i'm not saying you cant enjoy the game. you sure can but do it with like minded players. if you are going to run the endgame stuff with the vets/powergamers, be prepared to raise your game to a whole new level. an old saying goes, shape up or ship out. if you are not willing to do that, very soon you will find that none of them will admit you into their runs. this is a fact. this isnt a threat. people are not being elitist, people do not want their time wasted. each of us have different definitions of fun. people with different definitions of fun coming together is going to have moments of fiction. this is the truth