The direction of the game

[Drfirewater79]

This game has taken a major turn for the worse this update.

Epics used to be fun .. 1 or 2 pots per healer if any ... lasting between 20 mins and and hour for a raid

Now : 20-40 pots PER HEALER lasting 2 hours a raid for **** gear that is barely worth the work before update 11 and now its not FUN to play anymore.

Cove: before ... all about team work and the grind .. having FUN with friends doing something other then quest grinding

Now: rediculously hard with a good group of people who have played together for years who cant hit a 300 crystal run on lvl 20 let alone 25 which most people wont even run anymore.

.............

its about fun people .. if you make the game TOO CHALLENGING its no longer fun.

I know for some reason Turbine has turned Elitist on us .. and only cares about the 5% of players who actually enjoy this type of challenge ...

but the other 95% of us are not happy ... you took a fun grind and made it WORK not fun.

I sure hope you plan to reverse these changes.

and before you guys say "oh you just have to use fort lowering abilities"

EV6 last night 4 barbarians using sunder 2 with esos and 2 with eag
3 fighters two with improved sunder 1 with a esos and 1 with a eag the other minII
2 favored souls using there abilities
and a rouge using his....

we wiped after 20 mins with velah at 50% ... we are not inexperienced .. we used to run a ev6 everyday ... and echrono twice a day.

I may not be an elitist but i am not a bad player ... by far.
Definately above par ... and if "I" dont enjoy this game after sticking with it for all these years (never taking more then a month off at a time and a total of 4 months since march 2nd 2006) I cant see how any NEW players enjoy the fact that they will never see end game gear .. that the majority of VETS cant get now either.

if this game is putting elitist jerks above the average player ... then i am glad SWTOR is coming out .. cause this game the way it is right now .. it not worth paying to play... its barely worth playing for free.

[Grosbeak07]

I have similar feelings.

Content should be fun and somewhat challenging, but most of all fun.

Most of the epic and end game stuff, just isn't fun anymore.

[sheepface]

Slight exaggeration there.

[Drfirewater79]

PS.

For thouse who say nothing changed on normal for raids like shroud and what not ...

my barb in normal shroud yesterday went through all of part 5 without a single crit ... cause i was watching (as i havent played him since the update because i was leveling a artificer) since i was looking forward to seeing some nice high crits on my eag ... saw one crit the entire raid and it was the last hit on a portal.

say what you want .. they screwed this game over with the changes ... even on normal

[Crazyfruit]

This could be Warner Bros' buyout & the decisions they made finally having a big effect on us.

Back when I knew lots of people at Turbine, they didn't consider this a "MMO" - at least not in the typical way most players do. Can't imagine they'd have wanted to change the game like this. The new UI looked very similar to what other MMOs had too.

[Drfirewater79]

Slight exaggeration there.

no exaduration at all ... i have a buddy who used to heal echrono alot ... he has done 4 3 faliures and 1 success since the update .. and it cost him over 30 pots a run on his heals spec'd favored soul. Now he refuses to play his healer at all ...

what is the point of spending 30 pots per run to get gear that isnt worth a lick on your healer anyway? this is the same problem with ev6 getting healers ...

its no longer fun ... again .. the 5% of elitists might be having a blast the majority hate the changes ... at least those on sarlona i have talked to ...

many of the guilds i play with ... used to do nothing but epics and raids ... now half of them wont go into epics at all .. and the rest will only do raids on normal if they raid at all.

took this game from fun to ... not so much.

Personally you would think that with the biggest competition the MMO genre has seen in 8 years coming out in December that they would be making this game MORE fun .. not less.

[Oakianus]

You're crazy regarding the Cove. I have gotten the full 300 crystals about 70% of the time, and I'm running a first life Wiz who was 18th when I got started in there. Most of my groups are anywhere from 1-3 of my friends, and the rest are just PUG spots. Depending on the group setup, we've been mostly doing 20-23, but that's just because 25 is supposed to be pretty hard, and we're too casual and wussy for that sort of thing. :P

[mystafyi]

Slight exaggeration there.

hehe its only slightly.... but on a serious note, the lfms and users online(as shown by the /who and counting everyone) have seriously dropped.

The major problem folks dont take into consideration about this is: many players only stay cuz of the friends they have made in this game. without grouping its pretty dang hard to make friends in ddo. without a robust lfm panel... well you see where this is going for new players...

[Drfirewater79]

You're crazy regarding the Cove. I have gotten the full 300 crystals about 70% of the time, and I'm running a first life Wiz who was 18th when I got started in there. Most of my groups are anywhere from 1-3 of my friends, and the rest are just PUG spots. Depending on the group setup, we've been mostly doing 20-23, but that's just because 25 is supposed to be pretty hard, and we're too casual and wussy for that sort of thing. :P

Last update ... three of us on wizards (first life cause i hate tring casters) with three hirelings where able to beat it easy on lvl 25. Now we have a harder time beating it with a full party on lvl 20 .. i have seen one out of 10 runs get all 300.

again .. we are not elitists .. but we are far from **** players.

[krackythehoodedone]

It's not quite that bad.

First time Epics came out it was common to fail any of them.

Main change is the enormous gulf of power chasm between a fully kitted out (Epic Gear) Tr'd Lvl20 and someone who just hit cap for the first time.

Believe me your Team Epic is massascring all the new beefier Epics W/O the Healers using a pot.

For team not so long lvl 20 is where the nightmare stories of 60 pot runs coming from.

This is of course limiting the number of Epic Pugs

Causing the top players/guilds to stick together

[therobb]

Now: rediculously hard with a good group of people who have played together for years who cant hit a 300 crystal run on lvl 20 let alone 25 which most people wont even run anymore.

I couldn't disagree more. I like the increased challenges across the board.

The epic raids take a little longer, but nowhere near the resource consumption you're talking about. eVelah is still an auto win for a decent group. Regular epic quests are still the same smash-n-grab romps they used to be.

Crystal Cove 25 is the perfect difficulty IMO. True, I guess I wouldn't take a barbarian in there... but on a group full of casters & divines, it's still completely doable and we routinely get 250 to 300 dragonshards in mixed guild & PUG runs. It's just not a boring easy cakewalk like it was last time, it actually requires some communication & teamwork.

I'm sorry if some people don't like the increased difficulty. If Epic difficulty is too hard, there's always Elite or Hard or Normal options.

[Unreliable]

20-40 pots? really?

I never use more then a couple even now (and before I never used any)

[Munkenmo]

True, I guess I wouldn't take a barbarian in there... but on a group full of casters & divines, it's still completely doable

I see a balance issue there, do you?

[mystafyi]

group full of casters & divines, it's still completely doable

this is a major problem.

[Drfirewater79]

I couldn't disagree more. I like the increased challenges across the board.

The epic raids take a little longer, but nowhere near the resource consumption you're talking about. eVelah is still an auto win for a decent group. Regular epic quests are still the same smash-n-grab romps they used to be.

Crystal Cove 25 is the perfect difficulty IMO. True, I guess I wouldn't take a barbarian in there... but on a group full of casters & divines, it's still completely doable and we routinely get 250 to 300 dragonshards in mixed guild & PUG runs. It's just not a boring easy cakewalk like it was last time, it actually requires some communication & teamwork.

I'm sorry if some people don't like the increased difficulty. If Epic difficulty is too hard, there's always Elite or Hard or Normal options.

I am not a moron .. i have never taken a melee into cove ... i run a fire specd sorc or my pale master wizard ... self heal and do awesome damage (no epic dragon scale armor yet but now not worth workign on)

I guess your part of the 5% elitists that hang out on the forms telling the devs this game needs to be harder then it is ... your part of the problem I guess.

[Kmnh]

You see, you are supposed to progress into the harder content, not to have loot handed to you on a plate.

Oh, and the trick to chrono is to keep the boss exhausted, the melees hasted/raged and the trash dancing. Bring a bard, it helps a lot.

You lose a lot of DPS if your melees are missing. You can't complete the quest if the melees are trying to kill trash during the endfight.

[Drfirewater79]

It's not quite that bad.

First time Epics came out it was common to fail any of them.

Main change is the enormous gulf of power chasm between a fully kitted out (Epic Gear) Tr'd Lvl20 and someone who just hit cap for the first time.

Believe me your Team Epic is massascring all the new beefier Epics W/O the Healers using a pot.

For team not so long lvl 20 is where the nightmare stories of 60 pot runs coming from.

This is of course limiting the number of Epic Pugs

Causing the top players/guilds to stick together

Bull ... i am a TR on my barb ... and my frenzied kensai ... My FK has a full 5 piece aby set ... i have a total of something like 20 epic items over the 4 toons i have been outfitting ... my guild ran epics all the time ... most of us are geared well if not perfectly.

Its not fun at this current level of difficulty .. its work .. work is not fun .. grinding work really isnt fun.

again the only people having fun in epic raids today are people who are gluttons for punishment or elitist snobs.

[HAL]

You're crazy regarding the Cove. I have gotten the full 300 crystals about 70% of the time, and I'm running a first life Wiz who was 18th when I got started in there. Most of my groups are anywhere from 1-3 of my friends, and the rest are just PUG spots. Depending on the group setup, we've been mostly doing 20-23, but that's just because 25 is supposed to be pretty hard, and we're too casual and wussy for that sort of thing. :P

He's saying his experience, not his opinion. And frankly I agree. Some players think a game has to be really difficult to be fun. But not the vast majority of players.

[TemperanceC]

I have to say that while the grind isn't allways fun, its not a horrible as some people would believe. I have been mainly running CR 25 cove runs on my FVS and have not had too much trouble at all alot of it depends on the group your in and the luck of getting a good map.

[Drfirewater79]

You see, you are supposed to progress into the harder content, not to have loot handed to you on a plate.

Oh, and the trick to chrono is to keep the boss exhausted, the melees hasted/raged and the trash dancing. Bring a bard, it helps a lot.

You lose a lot of DPS if your melees are missing. You can't complete the quest if the melees are trying to kill trash during the endfight.

What are you talking about?

No one is asking for loot to be handed to them ... it was a grind before the update ... grinds are not HERES YOUR LOOT ... it took me months of grinding to get my sentinels sets and i only have 2 eag and not even one esos and i have been doing at least one ev6 every day for the last year almost. I have one seal .. not scroll or a shard not even a single dragon helm in over 100 runs.

As i said .. i am not some gimp noob that doesnt know how to play ..

my wizard has a 43 dc first life ...
my sorc has a 38 dc first life...
my fighter kensai hits 750 hps fully raged
my barb can hit mid 800s with no past life and only one toughness feat.

got 8 capped characters and 4 are trs.

again ... this proves my point i guess ... the majority of forumites are elitist snobs so the dev team has no clue what th majority of players think of this update cause you guys blow smoke up there ass making them think all is well on the home front.