You've Got Your Mario in My DDO!

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

MP got fixed tonight, sadly it is not in the build going to Lamannia.

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

As for Guen. SHE is not a pet, more a companion.

Pets are here to stay. Love them, or not.

[Bladedge]

As for Guen. SHE is not a pet, more a companion.

Pets are here to stay. Love them, or not.

So rangers, sorcs and wizards are not getting anaimal companions like the Artificers Iron Defender?

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

I never said anything about those.

Who knows what the future will bring with those woodland classes.

[TiranBlade]

Last I knew we had a T rating, not an M rating.

DDO is rated MK for Million Kobolds

[honkuimushi]

See? Pets have a place with good guys or bad guys. Everyone needs a sidekick.
I'm a pretty hardcore gamer and in other games I have tons of pets. They are cute, and fun. I even have a pet Shuttlecraft. What use is that? None, but it makes me smile every time I see it.

How many pets? More than 3. Much more. Some are soooooo cool.

So, speaking of cute, when do we get to see the succubi pets?

[Ungood]

Anything goes. Anything. From the super serious lore stuff, to dancing kobolds. It is all D&D.

Dungeon and Dragons was a rules system. It gave creative people a means to build worlds, and interact with them in a fair manner. What that world entailed, was entirely up to the GM.

So, yes, you guys have been doing a great job on this, and while I am not a fan of the Mario Brothers, jump around type stuff, it has it's place I assume.

But I suppose the most stand out problem is not with the game itself, but with a MMO mentality that players possess, and how sad it is that that people do want more from a game then yet another means to get a +1 to hit.

[Sillk]

I haven't logged into Lamannia so I have a few quesitons on the pets....

What do the pets do? Just follow you and do tricks? If you're tanking in VOD, do they get in the way? Do enemies have to move around them, or just walk through them? If you're in a battle, do they act differently than when you're just walking. Are they affected by traps, or underwater (i don't think my kitty likes water).

Can i have a monkey with cymbals?

Just wondering......

[CheeseMilk]

Can i have a monkey with cymbals?

No evil races allowed for PCs.

[herzkos]

Last I knew we had a T rating, not an M rating.

All the creepy and dark are still in there,we did not pull it out and put in ponies and rainbows, and in fiction even the darkest of characters could use a puppy...you know, like Mad Max. How about a Cockatoo for Whiplash in Iron Man 2, a Nazi monkey for the spy in Raiders, create your own crazy cat beast Bubastis from Watchmen , and even Jabba had a Rancor. The Starks had wolves, Drizzt of course hat a kitty cat, the Orangutan that hung out with Clint Eastwood and well, humans in Planet of the Apes.

See? Pets have a place with good guys or bad guys. Everyone needs a sidekick.
I'm a pretty hardcore gamer and in other games I have tons of pets. They are cute, and fun. I even have a pet Shuttlecraft. What use is that? None, but it makes me smile every time I see it.

How many pets? More than 3. Much more. Some are soooooo cool.

And the spider wearing a hat is awesome.

Read by a piker

I'd love to have a pet Minime. Or a Bobblehead(of my character), how cool would that be?
talkin' to some vendor and the guy jumps up on the table and starts nodding. I'd probably pee my pants
first time it happened. Wouldn't ask anyone else to see it on the server, just so I could see it myself.

/edit, I think this may be the most successful troll thread in history. The OP still has a grand total of 1 post as of this time.
And was last active 4 minutes after he posted this thread . . . WOW!!!!!

[tinyelvis]

I'll bet the devs are really scratching their heads over this thread. Anything they seem to do lately gets a damned if you do, damned if you don't response from the community.

I have played the game since 06 and still have no idea what is going on in Deleras. Couldn't explain one story line in the game, and have no real desire to learn the story lines of any. But that is just how I play. I think what might have happened here is not that the dev's have failed so much as that they succeeded beyond their wildest imaginations.

Free to play has saved the game and opened the flood gates. But with these oodles of players comes oodles of opinions, play styles, and desires. When is comes to designing content, it has to be (at least to some extent) designed to appeal not only to the masses but to the least common denominator of those masses and yet be challenging somehow to the uber players. This is almost an impossible task anymore. A success now seems like anything that only gets a handful of players to rage on the forum and quit.

Take the new content. A lot of it is very challenging (especially the challenges). If you have played them, especially to the point of (dare I say) challenging yourself in them, you will realize that a heck of lot of time went into designing them. However, they fall way above the skill level of the vast majority of folks currently in the game. And perceived rewards are too few (notice I said perceived) to warrant setting up a party to learn them. A cute story line could easily have been superimposed on top, but that would not change this fact. Their appeal factor to the masses is currently low. However, imagine the posts online if they had been a complete easy joke to complete. There would be even more discontent.

I think the devs have hit an unexpected wall. There really is no way they can produce content to satisfy the entire community. High level challenging content for the uber players, cutesy stories and sidekicks for the others, dark creepy gothic D&D for still others,...

Here is a solution.
I think the time has come for the next big evolution in MMO design. A serious effort should be made to hand over the majority of content design to the player base.

Highlight the hidden text above to read (could not resist the new gimmick in forum communication).

[Algreg]

Here is a solution.
I think the time has come for the next big evolution in MMO design. A serious effort should be made to hand over the majority of content design to the player base.

Highlight the hidden text above to read (could not resist the new gimmick in forum communication).

Actually there is a game out there that did just that (as an option). Guess what the supposedly content starved player base did with it: Build exploit dungeons to farm to cap in the most easy and most effective way possible and spam chat channels with offers of powerleveling others for a hefty fee all day long.

[Ungood]

Actually there is a game out there that did just that (as an option). Guess what the supposedly content starved player base did with it: Build exploit dungeons to farm to cap in the most easy and most effective way possible and spam chat channels with offers of powerleveling others for a hefty fee all day long.

Was anyone actually shocked they did that?

[Algreg]

Noone but the good hearted, well meaning devs I guess

[rfachini]

Actually there is a game out there that did just that (as an option). Guess what the supposedly content starved player base did with it: Build exploit dungeons to farm to cap in the most easy and most effective way possible and spam chat channels with offers of powerleveling others for a hefty fee all day long.

Very nice post, tinyelvis.

STO has player-made quests. NWN used to have user-made content PLUS the ability to play as a DM and directly control quests. I tried STO and the player-made quests were ranked by players to help you pick ones to try. One in particular was really fantastic-- great story, good gameplay, plus unique play in interaction mechanisms.

I agree that player-made content could have a place in DDO, and furthermore it really goes back to D&D's PnP roots as well.

[tinyelvis]

Give me 20 reasons why player created content would be a bad idea. I could then sit down one afternoon and come up with a number of safeguards and rules that would overcome all of these problems.

For example, quest timers. We have them already in epic and raid content.

Player rated quests. DM's must purchase or gain through questing some or all loot to stock quests. Popular quest creators could be rewarded with turbine points or subscription augmentation.

[Algreg]

Oh, don´t misunderstand me, I like the concept very much myself (well, minus the abuse part). Neverwinter Nights player created content was one of the best gaming experiences I ever had.

[Darkrok]

See? Pets have a place with good guys or bad guys. Everyone needs a sidekick.
I'm a pretty hardcore gamer and in other games I have tons of pets. They are cute, and fun. I even have a pet Shuttlecraft. What use is that? None, but it makes me smile every time I see it.

I know that pets can make a huge difference in a game. Just a silly thing like a pet cockroach came to define my character in WoW...I actually got the idea for my type of character to play from the pet. I built my toon to be as sturdy as a cockroach...me and my pet would be the last ones standing in the event of a nuclear war!

As for the OP's criticisms, DDO has consistently delivered high quality story-based quests up until U12. Yes, DDO has events like the ice jump, mabar, cove that come along and are less 'story' based. Yes, the latest update was light on story. But it sounds like U13 is jumping right back into heavy story-line based quests again. A single update and a few events that have been around for awhile don't signify a change of approach. They simply add some flavor and options to a heavily story-based game.

[BrennanRiesling]

D&D needs a face. It needs personality. Seriously, there are plenty of uncompromised games I can play to spend my time. I could play Gurps or turn on my my PS2, but when I wanted to do something special, I set up an D&D campaign.

Very pleased I decided to hop on forums today and find this. A perfect summation of my own sentiment, as well as many others I can imagine. Listen to this man Turbine, he knows what he's talking about!

Edit: Not to suggest that I believe that Turbine isn't giving their take on D&D enough feeling.

[EustaceTrevelyan]

Perhaps it had to happen. Perhaps the format makes it inevitable. It began with the festival events and has taken root and blossomed into the challenge system. DDO feels increasingly like an arcade game -- an advanced, graphically compelling arcade game, mind you, but an arcade game nonetheless.

Grinding quests for XP and loot, equipping new characters with hand-me-down power items and limitless bank accounts, bantering the numerical perfection of the "chosen builds", are fine and appealing for many. The challenge system, PVP, and the various events may attract these and others to gather further unique loot and unleash the undeniable power of their uberbuilds. I certainly won't begrudge anyone their preferences.

I would ask, however, that the game not continue to slide down the path toward just another elaborate arcade game with only the barest pretense of weaving interesting story lines together. As it is, this gaming format makes this perhaps the most significant challenge of all -- at least for the designers -- and I raise my sword in salute to those who would arise to see that the game re-examine its current trends and lead us through good stories as much as through mazes of cheeky kobolds.

I played mario when younger. I liked it as well as anyone, had as much fun as anyone, but I now loathe all things mario and mario-esque with a passion. It's just the weird, slavish nostalgia people have for the stuff, and the seeming compulsion to shoehorn cr@ppy ersatz minigame mario elements into everything now. It's just tiresome. MOVE ON already.

Sorry for the /rantish nature of the post, but if i wanted to go play a jumping game from the 1980s, i would absolutely go off and do that. And i'm not totally horrible at it, I managed to master the ice jump, and even adapt a new method when they tweaked it. But, please, no more. And if long time and respected DDOers like DoctorWhoFan, say, are any indication, I'm not alone.

Because, no matter what sort of game you want to play now, whether RTS, RPG, or even good old twitch, we're several generations removed from the Ancient Times. There are exponentially better games now, let's play them please, ok? And no, I don't want fries, or mario, with that.

It IS D&D-ish and you are playing at our table.

See, D&D can be anything. It can have a side game of cards, or dice. It can go to weird places, it can break it's own rules. D&D 'by the book' has gone to horror, post apocalyptic places, released a dice game for inside taverns(challenges), had cowboys and space aliens, and even Alice in Wonderland(Xorat I guess would be our version). There are rules for skill challenges (jump puzzles, trap rooms exc) and combat.

Anything goes. Anything. From the super serious lore stuff, to dancing kobolds. It is all D&D.

That said, not everything is for everyone. There are full systems I don't use, but it is nice that they exist, someday I may use them. Just like tabletop there are different types of gamers, and as designers we attempt to give each arch type something interesting at least once a year.

I'd like to address this, because I'd like to clarify. I'm not entirely in sync with the OP, i don't mind the odd arcade element here and there, and i'm not arguing it's not D&D, I just specifically am tired of mario type things. Other people are tired of other specific mechanics. So long as they're not central, required for decent stuff, and limited in scope as fun flavor, I don't think anyone can complain that much (and puzzles are D&D, old school, no one's disputing that.) So long as we can avoid the stuff we don't like without feeling like we're missing out, not a big problem.