LET'S TALK: Introduction

[MadFloyd]

Hi all,

For those of you who don't know me, I'm the Design Director for DDO. I manage the 'content' team and the 'systems' team. I don't get to make all the decisions of what we do, but I participate in and influence those decisions to the best of my abilities. :-)

I'd like to get your feedback on a number of topics and to that end I will be starting separate threads on each of them. The idea here is to make sure we're hearing your wishes, get constructive feedback on past updates as well as some future plans, and being able to drill down and ask some specific, but important questions.

Our update cycles require us to be developing/implementing and planning simultaneously. We're deep into both for 2012 updates but I want to be sure that we're targeting the right things and not overlooking the obvious. In short, I want as much overlap between your expectations and ours.

This is going to be somewhat tricky for a number of reasons. I'm not at liberty to divulge all our plans. There's always a high risk for misinterpretation. I expect some degree of controversy. I expect some cynicism and anger and I expect to be humbled at times.

One thing that is exceptional about the DDO community compared to many other MMOs is the level of maturity. Most of you are highly passionate about the game and can articulate your thoughts and ideas extremely well. I hope to see these attributes shine through in your responses and that we avoid non-constructive behavior, rudeness, etc. As usual, if you don't feel comfortable sharing your thoughts in these threads, feel free to PM me.

2011 has been an interesting year, but definitely bumpy in many respects. We need to do better in 2012.

Some of the topics on my mind are:
- class balance
- overall difficulty of content
- bugs
- AC
- Ranged combat
- Challenges
- True Reincarnation
- Strengths & weaknesses of the game
- where we're headed

I'm sure I'm forgetting some at the moment. These threads won't all happen at once, but I hope to get them going as soon as possible.

Thanks in advance for your constructive participation!

[somenewnoob]

(grabs pitchfork and torch) .....BURN THE.........wait.....oh......you want feedback from......uh.....from US?

[bhgiant]

(grabs pitchfork and torch) .....BURN THE.........wait.....oh......you want feedback from......uh.....from US?

thank you for making me laugh hysterically. I cannot rep you until I spread it around, so here's a virtual +1 to you

[Pank]

2011 has been an interesting year, but definitely bumpy in many respects. We need to do better in 2012.

Thanks for that, a lot, really.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some at the moment. These threads won't all happen at once, but I hope to get them going as soon as possible.

Can't wait. I have learned a lot in this forums about the game and how to play (and i'still a newb), I think we can all learn, even the Dev Team, from the experienced players. This kind of thread surely is a good start and please, please make it worth.

[whereispowderedsilve]

This *may* not be the appropriate place for this which I duly apologize for. *but/however* at least for Canada/USA

we should have a *toll free* 1800/1888 phone# to call. This is a slippery slope as DDO is played all over the world.

It should be taken under consideration though. With VOIP it shouldn't be a terrible expense for the company.

[rebelxzar]

This *may* not be the appropriate place for this which I duly apologize for. *but/however* at least for Canada/USA

we should have a *toll free* 1800/1888 phone# to call. This is a slippery slope as DDO is played all over the world.

It should be taken under consideration though. With VOIP it shouldn't be a terrible expense for the company.

How about a CS skype number to call, that is a great low cost option.

[Aashrym]

I am always happy to get and give feedback. A few teasers or general goals from development might be helpful tho.

[Gratch]

Thanks for the communication restart Madfloyd.

Instead of just posting a thread saying: What do you think about AC or such... can you give a high level blurb on where your teams see it going or known limitations so we have something to shoot at... err construct at?

-Gratch



Dear Mrs Sharp English Teacher,
Sorry about ending my sentence with a preposition.

[Dandonk]

/cheer

I really look forward to this. I think it has great potential.*




* for both good and bad, but let's stay positive here

[MsEricka]

I've gotta say it. You've got guts.

There's a lot of people on the forums with a lot of issues and they're going to tear you a new one.

Good luck, it's been nice partying with you.

[madmaxhunter]

Thank you Mr. Floyd. This is exciting news, just you posting here proves that the Devs DO listen to the forumites.

I have one suggestion, could the Major get a promotion? I think he's due for the rank of Lt Col. Of course Lt Col Malphunktion doesn't have the same ring.

[Ganolyn]

*rubs eyes* Is this the light at the end of the tunnel?

I have one suggestion, could the Major get a promotion? I think he's due for the rank of Lt Col. Of course Lt Col Malphunktion doesn't have the same ring.

They could promote him all the way up to General Malphunktion and keep the same ring.

[Bloodhaven]

*rubs eyes* Is this the light at the end of the tunnel?

There is an end to this tunnel?

To much grind.
TR should take less xp to level not more.

Tomes should not be reset on a TR. Spending $35 on a full stat +3 tome should not be wasted if you TR.

Make the tomes you'v read appear in your bag or TR bank BTC when you TR.


You have learned from your last life and feel you already know this quest. You don't need to run it 14X to gain the same knowledge from it.

That or allow us to bank XP at 20 for that next TR.

[herzkos]

*rubs eyes* Is this the light at the end of the tunnel?






They could promote him all the way up to General Malphunktion and keep the same ring.

i'll put my 2 copper in for :

Major General Malphunktion

[Dagolar]

*rubs eyes* Is this the light at the end of the tunnel?






They could promote him all the way up to General Malphunktion and keep the same ring.

Split the difference, make him Major General Malphunktion.

As far as the direction the game is going, I would like to see more follow-up to the stories in the QUESTS. There is some of that in the game, but more would be better, and not just cameo appearances, but more on the order of quests that follow-up on previous quests, and not just in raids. Other things that could be done would be to further flesh out existing areas. The Waterworks for example could be more of a hub for harbor quests(Invaders SHOULD be inside, perhaps down a newly opened section of tunnels), and Steam Tunnels could have a lot of stuff down there, not just Shan-to-Kor. The Depths series under House D works, but why not have more of a foundation to the city, and that would give more depth to why some buildings seem to be self contained, while others seem to invite monster invasions?

I would also LOVE more Xoriat themed quests like Delirium that really are a bit...insane. Fun stuff.

Finally, one thing that would be nice would be for flavor NPCs in the city(or outposts) to have more variation based on what the player or players in the group have done. What would have happened if the character had not helped on Sorrowdusk Isle? Or alternate reality quests(alternate versions of the prime material plane).

This brings up some old points:
Story should be reemphasized in DDO; But at the same time, all dialogues should have an immediate 'skip to end' option at the introductory conversation responses.

Quests like Purge the Heretics should have alternate outcomes and repercussions. Add in a Sovereign Host favor entry, and make Purge the Heretics offer two variations at your initial run, one of which positively affects Host favor and negatively affects Silver Flame, the other the opposite. Yes, it's a bit of a muddle to add in, but it's a good way of dealing with a clearly evil-aligned quest in a game that only allows you to play non-evil characters, and a great way to spice up the game's flavor and dimensions.

Sounds good! Looking forward to this.

- AC: Don't be afraid to lose the D20. Try to make all AC count for at least something.

- Challenges: Good idea, but some problems. Scaling is a bit extreme, discouraging grouping. I absolutely despise the Pay2Win stuff, though.

- True Reincarnation: Ideally, TR shouldn't be something that interferes with our end-game progression. We should be free to TR when we want, without losing more than the XP. As it is, we're encouraged to either TR serially, until we're "done", then get tomes, and Raid completions. That's not as much fun as being able to mix end-game advancement and TR freely. To that end, don't kill Raid tomes on TR, and don't reset Raid completions.
.

These.

Bugs
This is the most infuriating to me. I understand that I am risking some sort of slap-down from the moderators by mentioning a recent bug. This bug, which may or may not have ruined the economies of the servers while possibly benefitting a few players who may or may not have exploited content, really drove the point home that bugs seem to be out of control, and Turbine’s plan for addressing said bugs seems non-existent. There needs to be some serious review of the QA/testing phase, and bugs identified on Lammania that have game breaking potential need to be triaged. Even if it means prioritizing bug fixes above content. The integrity of the game has to come first, or all the content in the world is useless.

And for heaven’s sake, fix the ladder bug that has been around since launch, please? This is silly…

And this.


And finally, major points I forgot to mention:

*Boosts. 20 second boosts, with a comparatively lengthy initialization delay.
There's a reason the only boosts I've ever bothered with are skill boosts for roguing; I almost never even use armor boosts from defense build prereqs. Missing out on dps/blocking/etc for 3 seconds so you can get 18 non-overlapping seconds of boost of quality lower than lengthier buffs, abilities, procs; It doesn't work out.

This game isn't WoW. Pushing aside how we bear that as a mark of pride, it's also a valid point of mechanical difference: DDO isn't built for such short term boosts, at such limited quantities, with such long initial delays.

Boosts are implemented into the game as if they were especially potent- it'd be nice to see them reach that status.
A simple reduction of the delay and doubling of the boost duration would be enough to see them worth considering..
basing duration off of level [at perhaps 20s+2*level, to a total of 1 min duration] would an even more appealing route.

*Ingredient Bag Sorting.

*Scroll Cases, Spell Component Pouches, and Potion Satchels.

Edit:

*Reworking Vaults of the Artificers [http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...4&postcount=9]

[sirgog]

Thank you Mr. Floyd. This is exciting news, just you posting here proves that the Devs DO listen to the forumites.

I have one suggestion, could the Major get a promotion? I think he's due for the rank of Lt Col. Of course Lt Col Malphunktion doesn't have the same ring.

General Malphunktion?

Some of the topics on my mind are:
- class balance
- overall difficulty of content
- bugs
- AC
- Ranged combat
- Challenges
- True Reincarnation
- Strengths & weaknesses of the game
- where we're headed

Class balance is totally out of whack - unless bosses are heavily Lightning or Cold resistant or really unusual things are happening in an encounter, melee classes are totally obsolete unless they are heavily defensively specced. Why would I bring the Kensai that can do 400 DPS for 5 minutes, when I could replace them with the Sorcerer that can do 700 DPS for 5 minutes without needing any healing at all? Epic Chronoscope is the poster child of this - all caster runs have half the completion time of mixed class groups, and use no resources at all.
Casters can kill ten tough trash mobs in the time it takes melees to kill one, but that's mostly the insane power of AoE death spells.

Content difficulty - we've gone from '6 person Epics are hard, 12 person content is easy' to '6 person Epics are easy, 12 person content is tough' over the last year. This has the consequence of locking the more casual player out of the storylines of the tougher raids. At the same time, there's nothing truly tough in DDO, merely a bunch of endurance fights that test SP/boost conservation.
IMO the solution is to have complexity, not just monster stats, scale with difficulty. Consider what Shroud would be like if in part 2, Normal had three Lieutenants and Elite had 6, then in part 4, the spiraling blades were on all difficulties, but only Hard/Elite had them shoot back out at the raid, and only Elite had the seeker blades on devil death.

Bugs - there's a million and one of them. Some should be priorities (shared bank lag issues), others less so. I wouldn't mind bugs so much if GMs were able to replace items eaten by them.

AC - copied from my 'Update 13 release notes wishlist' here: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=354769

System Overhaul: Player AC

Monster to-hit and the grazing hit system has been adjusted with the following goals in mind:

* On Normal and Casual difficulties, a casual player that has made a moderate attempt at raising their Armor Class (level-appropriate items or buffs to Natural Armor, Protection and wearing full plate and a shield) should take a lot less damage from most monsters. This should apply all the way from level 1 to 20.
* On Elite difficulty, a highly optimised first life character that has gone out of their way to acquire high-quality defensive equipment and that uses some form of defensive combat stance should take noticeably less damage from most monsters.
* On Epic difficulty, a highly optimised multi-TR character that is decked out in top-notch defensively-oriented raid/epic loot and that fights in a defensive combat stance should be missed often enough to matter by the majority of monsters and should take noticeably less damage from the tougher raid bosses.
* A wider range of AC should be relevant in all content. Currently in Shroud Normal, an AC of 8 is the same as an AC of 40 (everything hits you on a 2) and likewise an AC of 77 is the same as an AC of 97 (everything misses you on an 18, grazes on a 19 and hits on a 20).
* High AC should not make you unable to be damaged on its own, but should allow you to survive longer – maybe even much longer – between healing.
* If possible, the d20 system's '5% auto-hit, 5% auto-miss' will be preserved.

To achieve those goals:
* Monsters of significant power now roll more than 1d20 on their attack rolls. Red and purple named bosses roll an additional 1d20 in all content. All monsters in Epic difficulty content roll an additional 1d20. Monster to-hit has been reassessed (downwards) to take this into account.
* Where monsters roll more than one attack die, only the first die rolled determines critical threats, automatic hits for rolling a 20, automatic misses for rolling a 1, or grazing hits.
* Grazing hits are now dealt on rolls of 15 or higher on all difficulties. Grazing hits now deal 15/20/25/30/40% of the attacker's base damage (c/n/h/e/EP) and do not proc special effects.
* Monster to-hit varies widely within quests on the same difficulty level.

Example:
Consider the Lord of Blades on Epic difficulty (a purple-named boss). For this example, he has been reassessed to have +76 To-Hit, and as an epic purple name, he rolls 3d20. His critical threat range is 17-20 and he has a special effect (Touch of the Mournlands) that procs on critical hits. Consider a player with 101 AC being attacked by him.

If the LOB rolls 2, 2, 20: The attack misses. LOB has rolled 100, and the player's AC is higher than that.
If he rolls 20, 1, 1 – the attack is an automatic hit and critical threat.
If he rolls 15, 2, 3 – the attack is a grazing hit. The LOB has rolled only 96 and the player's AC is higher than this, but as the first die is at least 15, this qualifies as a graze. Being Epic difficulty, the player suffers 40% of the regular damage, and would not suffer any special weapon procs such as Flaming or Wounding if the LOB somehow got one of them.
If he rolls 15, 12, 1 – the attack is a hit. The LOB has rolled 104, higher than the player's AC, and the '1' isn't on the first roll and so does not matter.
If he rolls 13, 11, 19 – the attack is a hit, but does not threaten a critical hit as the '19' was not on the magic first roll.
If he rolls 19, 2, 2: The attack misses but lands a grazing hit. Despite '19' being a possible critical threat, the overall roll wasn't high enough to make it hit. This does not proc Touch of the Mournlands.
If he rolls 19, 7, 9: The attack is a critical threat. If successfully confirmed, this will inflict Touch of the Mournlands, even if the extra damage is blocked by fortification.

Ranged combat:
It's getting better, but only because of encounter design that rewards it. Where Sorc ranged DPS is higher than melee DPS except in the very longest endurance battles, archer ranged DPS is far, far lower. A dedicated archer with no melee or spellcasting options is not a viable build in DDO at the moment.
IMO a simultaneous buffing of ranged attack rates and nerfing of Manyshot is a good starting point.

Challenges:
So much potential, but not quite there. Really would like to see a challenge that is solely based on combat with individually powerful mobs/bosses (the mansion ones are much more about speedkills of individually weak mobs).

True Reincarnation:
IMO the XP requirements remain too high. Levelling TRs is a grind and a chore to me, made better by the bravery bonus but still not there yet. The large XP requirements cause TRing players to be less new-player friendly too - I for one have posted LFMs as obnoxious as 'Zerging, started, people that can't make it here will be publicly mocked' and 'Zerging, elitist jerks only' when I've just wanted to speed up the time I'm stuck playing a class I don't enjoy.
The two things I'd suggest are:
- Let us choose to play as a 32 point build on 'intermediate' lives. 32 build points, 1.9m XP requirements.
- Change tomes that are looted in raids so that they persist through TRing. Unbound tomes would continue to be destroyed upon use, but bound tomes would not be 'used up', meaning you could use it again on your next life.

Strengths of the game:
Best combat in any MMO

Weaknesses:
Class imbalance
Lack of a clear future direction.

[Meat-Head]

General Malphunktion?


True Reincarnation:
IMO the XP requirements remain too high. Levelling TRs is a grind and a chore to me, made better by the bravery bonus but still not there yet. The large XP requirements cause TRing players to be less new-player friendly too - I for one have posted LFMs as obnoxious as 'Zerging, started, people that can't make it here will be publicly mocked' and 'Zerging, elitist jerks only' when I've just wanted to speed up the time I'm stuck playing a class I don't enjoy.
The two things I'd suggest are:
- Let us choose to play as a 32 point build on 'intermediate' lives. 32 build points, 1.9m XP requirements.
- Change tomes that are looted in raids so that they persist through TRing. Unbound tomes would continue to be destroyed upon use, but bound tomes would not be 'used up', meaning you could use it again on your next life.

These are particularly great ideas imo.

[Xoltaz]

Concerning TR (not sure if it's the right thread) - I might love the idea, of not 'loosing' tomes through TR, instead you recall that you heard of something specific earlier.

The point is: You eat tomes in this life: full effect -> TR: Level of tomes -1 so basicall +4 gives you on the next TR only a +3 bonus, +3 gives you +2, +2 converts to +1, etc. Might encourage people to use them earlier and not save them for their 'last life', which when new classes comes out, won't be their last life at all (if aiming for completionist).

[TEcarson]

Thank you Mr. Floyd. This is exciting news, just you posting here proves that the Devs DO listen to the forumites.

I have one suggestion, could the Major get a promotion? I think he's due for the rank of Lt Col. Of course Lt Col Malphunktion doesn't have the same ring.

Maybe General Chaos?

[Zess-wolf]

Nice move mad Good to see that you are trying to hear our..."screams" almost 2 years of DDO and i know that the staff can do really good!

Cheers

Zess

EDIT: Would like to make a sugestion, how about the specific topic: Raids...some of them are quite unplayable lately, not sure if its general opinion, but thats the way i see...(At least elite shroud and Abbot)