Let's Talk: Enhancements!

[CaptGrim]

IF it is mainly just a UI change and making it less difficult to implement PrEs, good.

BUT if you tinker with the way things work, mechanically. Bad.

By going to a "tree" system like every other mmo, it could ruin what is for me the best part of this game and that is freedom of build choices and decisions.

As long as the main system remains I'll be happy and even take some adjustments to values and removal of antiquated enhancements. The UI and selection process is clunky to say the least and does need some user friendly improvements but the system itself is solid and does not need messed with.

[JakLee7]

If new Pre's are available good
if some "useless" enhancements are "fixed" then great
if this is some plot to get us to spend more TP - not cool.

I hope for the best.

[toaf]

ok. i would think if you are gona mess with it. at least make it so people can cange things a few times without having to wait 3 days. and maybe make sure the dicription is good. no more of this **** with taking it then finding out it shares a timer with something no one would ever think of (fusilage and arti % damage boost) thos are a few or my problems i could see popping up and for the love of the GODS make sure if something isnt gona stack. say soo... someone did say " By going to a "tree" system like every other mmo, it could ruin what is for me the best part of this game and that is freedom of build choices and decisions." <---that is soo true
and someone said this "if this is some plot to get us to spend more TP - not cool." also also true

[Ganak]

The current enhancement system is not make or break for a players experience and does not contribute to player retention.

Resources should go towards adding more PrC's, and more content the better. This does affect player retention.

[jkm]

Commentary UI:

I think the most painful UI Control in the game is the one in chest loot for switching from player to player. Making that one a List Control with checkboxes for submittal would be a 100x more beneficial.

New UI Requirements:

1. The ability to print to file -> This could be for all available or for just mine. Something that I can look at it and decide which ones are better.

2. For New Players -> Stars for the top 10 most popular enhancements available to that character, based on a top 10 count on the server.

3. For New Players -> A more intuitive method for explaining that clickable enhancements should go on their bars. Whether it auto-adds it to their bar or throws a bunch of arrows pointing them to drag it to their bar. Something.

4. A better rules engine -> Currently you use Cardinality, Minimum, Requires, and OR but only in a single tier. You definitely need the ability to nest rules as well as probably adding Maximum, AND, Recommends, and XOR to get the rest of the items that you need.

Recommends would make suggestions to new players in a box at the bottom and explain why. It could be similar text from the 101 guides done earlier.


Nesting will allows multiple ways to qualify for enhancements. This will really open up qualifying for enhancement lines for multi-classing by replacing Requires Paladin 6 with Requires Paladin 6 OR (Paladin 4 AND Rogue).


Adding the attribute Maximum will allow you to control overboard enhancement loading. Basically it will allow you to stack points on a set of enhancements if the chain is too overpowered without killing the enhancement line totally. Yes, it creates a more complicated system, but it also provides a method for penalizing min/maxing.


So some examples (random, no implied intent here):


1. Racial Toughness is 1/2/3/4 if base Constitution is <20 but it might be 2/3/5/8 if the base Con of the character is > 20.

edit
5. The ability to Hide Enhancements - Even better if its multi-select

[jkm]

The current enhancement system is not make or break for a players experience and does not contribute to player retention.

Resources should go towards adding more PrC's, and more content the better. This does affect player retention.

If you look into what he is saying, the current system is very labor intensive to add new enhancements. Part of the revamp is probably to make this more data driven so that it takes less dev hours to crank out more things.

[CanuckWisdom]

If your (turbine) looking for feedback and ideas here; There is lots to address Im sure but I'd suggest a look at balancing the enhancement cost of HotD with KotC. I cant remember if HotD is just more expensive or if its just that I would not take the prereq's for HotD 3 for any reason but to qualify.

[dkyle]

Adding the attribute Maximum will allow you to control overboard enhancement loading. Basically it will allow you to stack points on a set of enhancements if the chain is too overpowered without killing the enhancement line totally. Yes, it creates a more complicated system, but it also provides a method for penalizing min/maxing.

So some examples (random, no implied intent here):

1. Racial Toughness is 1/2/3/4 if base Constitution is <20 but it might be 2/3/5/8 if the base Con of the character is > 20.

This sounds awful. I see no good reason to have these sorts of punitive rules.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

I'd be absolutely fine with a one-time enhancement reset that makes room for a more intuitive UI and an easier enhancement selection process.

I can never remember when I planned to take specific enhancements, and so every visit to a trainer to do enhancements has me flipping back and forth between a character plan I have in a document file and the game itself. I'd be glad (and grateful) to stop needing to do that.

[dragons1ayer74]

Some of you might dismiss this as ‘fixing something that isn’t broken’ and that’s fine – it’s totally subjective – but, hey, I’m giving you a heads up just the same.

We hate the Enhancement UI. It’s been 4 years and I still cringe every time I see it, let alone use it. It does a poor job of letting players plan out character goals and you need the patience of a saint to use it. I could go on and on, but I won’t (feel free to use this thread to vent your frustrations with it if you share our opinion).

We’re re-doing it – replacing it with a tree-based design that should make character planning and advancement much better and also have the added benefit of making it easier for us to implement new enhancements (PrE’s anyone?).

It will also be the foundation for some future work.

It does mean that when this goes live, all of you will have your enhancements reset and you will have to re-spend your action points. Some enhancements will remain the same, but many will be new. The changed enhancements will also help balance out many classes (think augmentation here, not nerfs). I appreciate that forced change can be very stressful and realize that this will be major inconvenience for those who don’t enjoy having to make a ton of decisions – especially when there are ‘new’ enhancements to digest, but have no doubt it will be worth it in the end.

I hope that many of you will welcome this sort of change, but either way, feel free to share your thoughts and concerns. Again, I invite PMs for those who prefer to voice their opinions that way.

Please don't force an enhancment reset, unless the player wants to make changes I still have a few characters that have a grand fathered enhancment that can't be choosen and on those few old beloved characters I hope that is not taken away.

[sirgog]

Commentary UI:

I think the most painful UI Control in the game is the one in chest loot for switching from player to player. Making that one a List Control with checkboxes for submittal would be a 100x more beneficial.

New UI Requirements:

1. The ability to print to file -> This could be for all available or for just mine. Something that I can look at it and decide which ones are better.

2. For New Players -> Stars for the top 10 most popular enhancements available to that character, based on a top 10 count on the server.

3. For New Players -> A more intuitive method for explaining that clickable enhancements should go on their bars. Whether it auto-adds it to their bar or throws a bunch of arrows pointing them to drag it to their bar. Something.

4. A better rules engine -> Currently you use Cardinality, Minimum, Requires, and OR but only in a single tier. You definitely need the ability to nest rules as well as probably adding Maximum, AND, Recommends, and XOR to get the rest of the items that you need.

Recommends would make suggestions to new players in a box at the bottom and explain why. It could be similar text from the 101 guides done earlier.


Nesting will allows multiple ways to qualify for enhancements. This will really open up qualifying for enhancement lines for multi-classing by replacing Requires Paladin 6 with Requires Paladin 6 OR (Paladin 4 AND Rogue).

Really like a lot of these suggestions.

The 'Recommended for New Players' could be ones you poll players about (example: Fighter Haste Boost 4 is widely considered one of the best enhancements in the game).


One suggestion that's about enhancement power rather than the UI - Can I suggest that the action boosts that provide a % increase in performance (Haste Boost, Damage Boost, and some others) grant their full power at tier 1, but with limited uses, and higher tiers grant more uses of them?

This would be useful because at present, Damage Boost 1 actually *decreases* DPS if you do not have Quick Draw or break its animation with Cleave.

My suggestion would let players use these enhancements better at low level. A +30% attack speed increase twice per rest is really noticeable, whereas a +15% one five times per rest is not. (IMO this would be a minor increase in character power for multiclass builds overall, but that would be pretty small).

[jkm]

Enhancements Architecture

I'm making this a separate section, because the current overaching design of the enhancement system isn't working. As it stands, the way that they are being utilized is in direct counterpoint to DDO's greatest strength -> Character Customization.

What the enhancement system SHOULD do

1. Create BILLIONS of viable permutations for players - The current implementation limits permutations by only making a few attractive. This is because a class is an order of magnitude better if they take a PrE than if they don't.

1A. There should be multiple ways to qualify for a PrE - Once again we are talking about increasing permutations.

Example:

Tempest 1 -> Ranger 6 or [TWF, ITWF, Spring Attack, Combat Expertise]

1B. They shouldn't be required to play a class

• PrE's should provide niche flavor but be no more powerful overall than a character who took no PrEs.
• It should also not increase in power over tiers, this provides disincentive to multi-class narrowing permutations further.
• Base classes should have abilities that are as powerful as the other PrEs in the class effectively creating a new PrE of the base class (IE Assassin, Acrobat, Mechanic, Rogue). These would be unaccessible if you take a PrE.

1C. Each Tier should have multiple selectable abilities

Assassin 1 has 1 ability
Assassin 2 has 1 ability
Assassin 3 has 1 ability

This leaves us with 4 permutations for Assassins (You don't take it, You take tier 1, you take tier 1 and 2, you take 1, 2 and 3). All of this for thousands of hours of dev/test time. Now, by thinking about maximizing that Dev time here, we do the following for minimal more dev time.

Assassin 1 has 10 abilities and you choose 1
Assassin 2 has 10 abilities and you choose 1
Assassin 3 has 10 abilities and you choose 1

Wow, for probably 2x the investment I just increased our number of permutations to over a 1000. If you did this to all 3 Rogue PrEs as well as adding another PrE of Rogue as well as allowing methods to intermix the 3 PrEs you have millions of permutations. Permutations that buildoholics will try and try again.

1D. Multiclassing should be viable again - Remember the days when everyone complained there was no need to stay pure? Ah, the good ole days. The problem with the current PrEs is that a level 17 Barb is an order of magnitude less powerful than a level 18 Barb. Capstones have given more than enough incentive to stay pure, PrEs shouldn't too.

[noinfo]

Enhancements are what make and break this game and the individuality of all characters both classes and races.

They are ulitmately the reason why one race is more poweful by far than another and why some classes are sigficantly weaker than others in the same category (ie divine vs divine, arcane vs arcane and more clearly melee vs melee)

Taking care of the development and design of these is essential but a redevelopment is long long overdue.

Enhancements beyond 20 should be able to be earned and a wide variety of additional enhancements should be introduced both class, race and general.

And yes points costs on some pre need work.

[jkm]

This sounds awful. I see no good reason to have these sorts of punitive rules.

Variable costs can be rewarding or punitive. The example I was giving was just an example of trying to get the D4 hit point problem taken care of (where they are effectively D8 classes because they aren't penalized for min/maxing). It just gives the devs more tools to help balance classes.

As I said, the biggest issue would be the confusion created by it.

[jkm]

One suggestion that's about enhancement power rather than the UI - Can I suggest that the action boosts that provide a % increase in performance (Haste Boost, Damage Boost, and some others) grant their full power at tier 1, but with limited uses, and higher tiers grant more uses of them?

This would be useful because at present, Damage Boost 1 actually *decreases* DPS if you do not have Quick Draw or break its animation with Cleave.

My suggestion would let players use these enhancements better at low level. A +30% attack speed increase twice per rest is really noticeable, whereas a +15% one five times per rest is not. (IMO this would be a minor increase in character power for multiclass builds overall, but that would be pretty small).

I'd be okay with this as long as they move to more "active" instead of "always on".

[fco-karatekid]

IF it is mainly just a UI change and making it less difficult to implement PrEs, good.

BUT if you tinker with the way things work, mechanically. Bad.

By going to a "tree" system like every other mmo, it could ruin what is for me the best part of this game and that is freedom of build choices and decisions.

As long as the main system remains I'll be happy and even take some adjustments to values and removal of antiquated enhancements. The UI and selection process is clunky to say the least and does need some user friendly improvements but the system itself is solid and does not need messed with.

I never played wow or any other MMO - how'd the tree limit choice (real question, not being snarky)?

First thing I thought of was Civilization's tech tree, so I thought this'd be a good thing from a user perspective.

[Vormaerin]

I'd be okay with this as long as they move to more "active" instead of "always on".

? What is always on about boosts?



Anyway, I am strongly in favor of a revamp of the UI. It really is terrible. I'm not able to make the mental link between our current enhancements and a tree system so I can't really comment on that. But... OMG is taking a fighter splash a good way to make your enhancement list practically unusable.. *ewww*.

I do hope that the changes increase rather than decrease flexibility. Some classes like Bard and Paladin have more good enhancements than they can possibly buy....mostly due to expensive and useless prerequisites.

I don't want everyone to be able to buy everything, though. I'm definitely looking forward to more information on this.

[Ganolyn]

One suggestion that's about enhancement power rather than the UI - Can I suggest that the action boosts that provide a % increase in performance (Haste Boost, Damage Boost, and some others) grant their full power at tier 1, but with limited uses, and higher tiers grant more uses of them?

This would be useful because at present, Damage Boost 1 actually *decreases* DPS if you do not have Quick Draw or break its animation with Cleave.

My suggestion would let players use these enhancements better at low level. A +30% attack speed increase twice per rest is really noticeable, whereas a +15% one five times per rest is not. (IMO this would be a minor increase in character power for multiclass builds overall, but that would be pretty small).

I brought up this very point in my own thread and not only got told it wasn't important (basically because it seems low level toons don't count for anything), I got neg rep for defending my position. Damage Boost is broken because of the % style they implemented and should work more like this:

Damage Boost I = +10% or +2, which ever is greater

Damage Boost II = +15% or +3, which ever is greater

Damage Boost III = +20% or +4, which ever is greater

Damage Boost IV = +25% or +5, which ever is greater

[jkm]

? What is always on about boosts?

Always on = static boosts like +3 crit mod or +10% attack speed just because you take enhancements. Autoattacking shouldn't come close to the dps of an active attacker.

[walkingwolfmike]

If you can add in a new " Summon Kobold Companion " enchancement, we can call it square. No, this is not an attempt to be funny. I want my Kobold Companion!