Vote for 5 changes to see in Update 8

[der_kluge]

Ok, so following these threads:
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=283715 (the thread that won't seem to die!)
and
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=284240 (the summary of the above)

the original intention was to collect a bunch of suggestions, and then to have everyone pick from that list. This is a brainstorming approach that is often used to isolate what the most important items are from a larger group - perfect for just this kind of thing. It's valuable because people often suggest things you yourself didn't think of. And while there are things I'd personally love to see in the game, I concede that some of my personal favorites are not all that important in the grand scheme of things, and so while my suggestions included relatively minor things, my votes might not necessarily reflect what I think is truly important.

In collating this list, I've paired down ALL of the suggestions from the first thread into 50 distinct things. I didn't include everything, mosty to make the process slightly easier for myself. I tried to use some judgment in deciding what not to include, but things that got left out were only suggested one time in the original entry, and were things that were generally oddly specific (add more sickles to the game!), lacked widespread appeal (add steel dragons as a playable race!), or just plain isn't gonna happen (rewrite the entire game's engine!).

I also tried to break them down into manageable (and feasible) things. "Add more high level content" is nice, but it's not specific. Does that mean new epic quests, or new 15th level quests? I tried to be a bit more specific. As someone who has, in the past, gathered and created requirements for a living, I know the value in a request being specific.

With that said, vote for 5 - and only 5 (or less, if you so desire). Just use the item numbers for voting reference. I've categorized them for simplicity, but don't let that constrain your vote. If you want to vote for all things in a single category, knock yourself out.

Think of it like this. If you could see 5, and only 5 changes in update 8, which changes would they be?

I'll tabulate the votes and post them once a fair number of votes have been established.

Here is the list.

Quests.
1. Add some new 10th-13th level quests.
2. Add some new 14th-17th level quests.
3. Add some new 18th-20th level quests.
4. Improve quests – specifically, make NPCs walk faster and decrease the timers for gates in Delera’s; improvements to “The Crucible”.
5. Improve raid-flagging so that it is less painful (Stealer of Souls; ToD, I’m looking at you!)

Character customization
6. Add the ability to dye your armor and robes.
7. Add the ability to adjust the height and weight of characters.
8. Add the ability to allow characters to change sex, either via DDO store options, or during true reincarnation.
9. Add familiars and/or animal companions.

Classes
10. Add druids as a new playable class.
11. Add Bladesinger as a new class.
12. Add Duskblade as a new class.
13. Add Artificers as a new class.

Races
14. Add gnomes as a new player race.
15. Improve half-elves, both mechanically and aesthetically.
16. Add kobolds as a new player race.
17. Add shifters as a new playable race.

Magic
18. Add spell component bags.
19. Add more spells to the game.
20. Fix issues around spells – specifically the disparity in mana costs for commonly used, versus rarely used spells and spell descriptions. Remove or improve useless spells. Improve Ice Storm to be more like firewall.
21. Add clerical domains for clerics.

Prestige Enhancements
22. Add a full line of sorcerer and Favored Soul prestige enhancements.
23. Finish all of the existing prestige enhancements to tier III.

Combat
24. Add *something* to fix to ranged combat. Maybe increased rate of fire, or increased crit-modifiers.
25. Fix armor-class. Make it more relevant at higher levels. Fix shields – give them more AC bonus.
26. Improve “sword-n-board” combat, like a feat line like TWF and THF both get.
27. Improve “unpopular” weapons like bastard swords or dwarven axes to give an incentive for people to actually use them.
28. Fix some of the issues around stealth – sneak-humping, not dropping when you attack, etc.

Crafting
29. Add the ability to “deconstruct” greensteel items into their component pieces.
30. Add more crafting options. Like, adding more damage types to weapons, or effects to items (i.e., more reasons to make collectibles actually useful beyond level 4).
31. Add NPCs that are willing to trade ingredients for other ingredients, like greensteel ingredients.
32. Improve Trap-making - add more trap parts, or make trap making less expensive or easier.

Epic
33. Add epic versions of Gianthold quests.
34. Improve the drop rates for epic items and shroud ingredients.
35. Add extra levels (epic levels) above level 20.
36. Add a system that allows epic tokens to be used as a form of currency for epic level gear.
37. Add the ability for non-20th level true reincarnated characters to enter epic level quests.

Gameplay
38. Add rogue hirelings.
39. Fix XP issues. For example, the 50% XP hit 1 level above the range for a wilderness area, and the huge discrepencies of “xp-per-min” for quests. In general, re-evaluate the XP for all quests.
40. Improve monster AI – for example, have them get out of firewalls.
41. Add a hireling-like toolbar for summoned monsters.
42. Remove the “fog of war” from wilderness areas once they have been explored.

UI Improvements
43. Add inventory management to collectible and ingredient bags.
44. Add the ability to share platinum via the shared bank.
45. Add the ability to hotbar arrows stored in quivers.
46. Add some search capabilities to the mailbox.

Other
47. Fix the “Known Issues” - http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=150534
48. Fix performance issues; character switching memory leak and lag issues.
49. Add the ability to be able to bind to your air ship.
50. Fix the bug that prevents NPCs from detecting items stored in inventory bags.

[Emil_Jaeo]

From most important to least...

29. Add the ability to “deconstruct” greensteel items into their component pieces.
43. Add inventory management to collectible and ingredient bags.
6. Add the ability to dye your armor and robes.
48. Fix performance issues; character switching memory leak and lag issues.
30. Add more crafting options. Like, adding more damage types to weapons, or effects to items (i.e., more reasons to make collectibles actually useful beyond level 4).

[Dylvish]

1) 5. Improve raid-flagging so that it is less painful (Stealer of Souls; ToD, I’m looking at you!)
2) 15. Improve half-elves, both mechanically and aesthetically.
3) 26. Improve “sword-n-board” combat, like a feat line like TWF and THF both get.
4) 24. Add *something* to fix to ranged combat. Maybe increased rate of fire, or increased crit-modifiers.
5) ***One you missed here that I personally feel is rather important endgame... FIX MEDIUM / HEAVY ARMOR to be viable past level 14!!
6) (since the other one currently is not something you can put a vote on yet, please correct 27. Improve “unpopular” weapons like bastard swords or dwarven axes to give an incentive for people to actually use them.

[Dulcimerist]

My choices, in no particular order:

25. Fix armor-class. Make it more relevant at higher levels. Fix shields – give them more AC bonus.
27. Improve “unpopular” weapons like bastard swords or dwarven axes to give an incentive for people to actually use them.
32. Improve Trap-making - add more trap parts, or make trap making less expensive or easier.
39. Fix XP issues. For example, the 50% XP hit 1 level above the range for a wilderness area, and the huge discrepencies of “xp-per-min” for quests. In general, re-evaluate the XP for all quests.
42. Remove the “fog of war” from wilderness areas once they have been explored.

[dunklezhan]

In no particular order. I also suspect that four of these are the same issue. meh.

18
43
45
47
50

[EKKM]

9. more 18-20 quests (non-epic level 20 quests anyway, for TR xp grind)
6. custimze armour (dye is good but seperate slots for armour appearance vs armour functionality would be better)
23. finish all PrE to level III
39. Reavaluate xp levels in quests. Level 19 quests in IQ should not give less than Stormcleave.
XX. Change how action boost enhancing items affect uses remaining. Switching out stalwart/kensai necklace twice should not reduce total count by 4. My SD has 7 action boosts. I swap to use a GH clicky - 2 gone, later see a beholder and switch to SF talisman I lose 2 more (3 left and none actually used).

[Requiro]

In no order:

3. Add some new 18th-20th level quests.
6. Add the ability to dye your armor and robes.
9. Add familiars and/or animal companions.
41. Add a hireling-like toolbar for summoned monsters.
47. Fix the “Known Issues” - http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=150534

[hdogan]

1) Complete PrEs (especially for Clerics and Sorcerers)
2) Druids
3) Gnomes
4) High level F2P/P2P quests
5) Bug fixes, improve ranged combat and complete half-elves (including appearance)
...
...
...
6) Fix female halfling animations, and halfling sounds

[Enfira]

31
18
19
6
26

[der_kluge]

5) ***One you missed here that I personally feel is rather important endgame... FIX MEDIUM / HEAVY ARMOR to be viable past level 14!!

That would be #25.

[Scraap]

20. Fix issues around spells – specifically the disparity in mana costs for commonly used, versus rarely used spells and spell descriptions. Remove or improve useless spells. Improve Ice Storm to be more like firewall.
24. Add *something* to fix to ranged combat. Maybe increased rate of fire, or increased crit-modifiers.
25. Fix armor-class. Make it more relevant at higher levels. Fix shields – give them more AC bonus.
32. Improve Trap-making - add more trap parts, or make trap making less expensive or easier.
39. Fix XP issues. For example, the 50% XP hit 1 level above the range for a wilderness area, and the huge discrepencies of “xp-per-min” for quests. In general, re-evaluate the XP for all quests.

These all fall under the 'valid variety is a good thing' category, be it play-style, or different quests while leveling.
(Though I will note I disagree with specifically giving shields more AC bonus as has been done with the rest of the bonuses. Stacking more and more range between the haves and the have-nots is exactly what breaks the d20 system.)

[justhavinfun]

47
48
20
10
23
First of all lets get what we know is broken fixed

[jortann]

4
6 - but add in other customizable looks along with color changes
18
25
38

[der_kluge]

No reason I can't add my own votes.

48
20
2
18
23

[sirgog]

3 - 18+ quests
2 - 15-17 quests
33 - Gianthold Tor Epic
29 - Greensteel deconstruction

Then I'm really torn - probably 37 (letting TR'ed toons that aren't yet 20 into epics). There's a lot of others I like too, but let's commit

37

[Jaid314]

in numerical order (unless you want us to rank them?)

13. Add Artificers as a new class. (yeah, this isn't remotely realistic. i'd still like it)
19. Add more spells to the game. (what i actually want is that my sorcerer shouldn't have all the spells my wizard actually uses, and my wizard shouldn't fill up all his extra slots with the spells my sorcerer wouldn't care much about if i even had those slots... which could be handled by making more spells we already have worthwhile as well. but then, there's not much you can do to make me really want merfolk's blessing in my list, so...)
22. Add a full line of sorcerer and Favored Soul prestige enhancements. (ideally, this would count elemental savant as 1 prestige class, and add 1 more beyond the currently announced ones)
23. Finish all of the existing prestige enhancements to tier III.
47. Fix the “Known Issues” - http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=150534 (seriously, how long have some of these been around?)

[MrCow]

3. Add some new 18th-20th level quests.
10. Add druids as a new playable class.
19. Add more spells to the game.
48. Fix performance issues; character switching memory leak and lag issues.

[Moltier]

3. Add some new 18th-20th level quests.
6. Add the ability to dye your armor and robes.
18. Add spell component bags.
25. Fix armor-class. Make it more relevant at higher levels. Fix shields – give them more AC bonus.
35. Add extra levels (epic levels) above level 20.

[voxson5]

Would love to select a lot more than this:

2. Add some new 14th-17th level quests
18. Add spell component bags
26. Improve “sword-n-board” combat, like a feat line like TWF and THF both get
40. Improve monster AI – for example, have them get out of firewalls
47. Fix the “Known Issues” - http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=150534

[shadowhop]

2. Add some new 14th-17th level quests.

19. Add more spells to the game.

26. Improve “sword-n-board” combat, like a feat line like TWF and THF both get.

32. Improve Trap-making - add more trap parts, or make trap making less expensive or easier.

42. Remove the “fog of war” from wilderness areas once they have been explored.