Casual Elimination of Named or Rare Items

[Kinerd]

From the other side the problem may be that you need to run 20x some quest to get a single piece of transition gear which is not even so uber. Thinking about Dragontouched armor, to get desired settup you need to do at least 10x runs and this is not so much endgame.

Ding ding ding ding! Absolutely right, cannot be argued. Grind does not make a game challenging, or exciting, or fulfilling. It is the opposite of all those things. Casual quests go only slightly faster than normal quests, but if you have to run the quest 100 times to get what you want, slightly adds up. (It adds up even faster if you are subjected to the unconscionably terrible design of phasing monsters, for instance in the Dreaming Dark quest.)

Less Grind Equals Good.

I have played for however many months without ever having an Ioun Stone, and I will play however many more in the same state. I have no interest and therefore no bias in this matter. I can see the only truth:

Less Grind Equals Good.

So Turbine may have killed two birds... with... one... ioun stone. </barf>

Oh, take a bow! The better to acknowledge the slow applause you have surely received.

[Matuse]

Less Grind Equals Good.

By that standard, every quest should offer ever possible reward every time.

The Shroud should drop 15-20 large ingredients per person from the part 5 chest.

That's less grind, so it must be good, right?

[Kinerd]

By that standard, every quest should offer ever possible reward every time.

The Shroud should drop 15-20 large ingredients per person from the part 5 chest.

That's less grind, so it must be good, right?

Your only recourse is to go to an unreasonable extreme, proving my point.

[Mastese]

Lots of good perspectives, as I anticipated. As a point of clarification though, my original point wasn't in criticizing farming, anyone's playstyle against my own, or the nerfing/alienation of new players who depend on Casual as a stepping off point.

What it really comes down to for me is the devaluation of loot as a whole, and a step (not the right or only one) that could help to bring back some of that value. Ioun stones are only one example of items that only months ago held great value due to their rarity (even persistent, continual farming could not produce dependable results, if any...same with +3 tomes).

Some feel that opening up availability like this helps newbies/lowbies by allowing them to keep up with the Jones’ and is a great equalizer. But I think that as more gear becomes more commonplace, it actually hurts them. How much more powerful was it for the same newbie/lowbie who would by chance, pull a Pale Lavender Ioun stone before they became actively farmable? Not so long ago it was fairly newsworthy that any toon would carry one. Lately, it's more newsworthy that you haven't gone out and farmed one (why wouldn't you?)

I agree, DDO is gear oriented, but the more all things become actively attainable through moderate means, the less diversity we end up enjoying for ourselves and others. Yes, there are a few meaningful alternatives to Minos Legens as headgear for some specific builds, but for the rest of us...is there really any reason not to be wearing one? Not really, it's an expectation...and it's availability in reality devalues the majority of anything else you would be crazy enough to put on your skull past level 12 (and not having one could get you kicked from your group).

Yes, just like the government prints more money and hands out more cash based on the theory it will keep a failing economy stimulated, DDO continues to churn out more gear and easier ways to attain it in order to continue to stimulate perhaps what is faltering interest in the game. I'm of the opinion that this philosophy may ultimately end up doing enough permanent and irrevocable damage that it will eventually be completely irreversible. "Gratz on that Mindfury Symbiont...'yawn'…”

I feel that in some ways, we're all blindly being funneled into the same exact builds with no individuality because most things are attainable through direct action. Through general leveling, you get buried in an avalanche of named loot with relatively little effort that it almost has you fooled that it's not junk for all of 30 seconds each time you pull one ("Whoa! A Phiarlan Spy Dagger!!!...oh, never mind…") I Would love to pull something someday that most people don't already have cluttering up their bank...in fact, I'd love if you pulled it instead of me just as much.

Instead of dumping more and more piles of gear on every street corner, maybe they should focus on adding Classes, Races and associated Pre's to provide more affective specializations and keep the gear, well, valuable and special.

-Mastese

[Matuse]

Your only recourse is to go to an unreasonable extreme, proving my point.

Your unequivocal position is that less grind is good. Therefore removing all grind is the most good. How is that an unreasonable extreme? You don't like grind. You think less grind is good. Therefore BY YOUR OWN VIEWPOINT you believe in removing all grind.

It's your point (your actual point, as opposed to whatever point is it you think you're making but aren't). I'm only illustrating how absurd it is.

[Drakos]

/Not Signed

I really don't care if someone wants to take the easy route to uber gear, they are only cheating themselves out of the fun of a battle well fought. It in NO way lessens the fun someone esle has going the more difficult route to acheive the same prize.

I try not to obsess over other peoples gear or how they acquired it.

[balancetraveller]

Sounds like OP didn't really understand what was going on with all the Casual (ioun) farming LFMs before making this suggestion. If there is anything wrong with this phenomenon it's the new mechanism introduced in U13, nothing to do with Casual at all.

[Kinerd]

Your unequivocal position is that less grind is good. Therefore removing all grind is the most good. How is that an unreasonable extreme?

You are assuming indefinite extension where none has been proposed, sir or madam. If I said "being obscenely overweight is bad, less weight is good", it would be unreasonable to claim I am for anorexia, starvation, etc.: zero weight. In the same way, when I specifically mention "run[ning] a quest 100 times" and say less is good, it is unreasonable to claim I am for running a quest once or less per item.

[Matuse]

So then what is the standard? 1 run? 5? 25? You want less than 100, how about 98?

When does it start to be a grind?

[Lleren]

At my current burn out point, it starts being a grind on about the first run. When I'm enjoying the game, after about the first month for a Timer locked raid, or about the first week if doing something once a day, sooner if less restricted. However that is a personal scale for me.

To me "Grind" is when the game tests your time availability and tolerance for repetitive actions, not your various game related skills. Communication, leadership and teamwork among those related skills. If something is solo-able, it is more likely to be perceived as grindy, then if it takes a team effort.

Casual Farming is by my definition a Grind. Even on the first run, if you already know the quest.

p.s. Blizzard didn't make mmo's item based, mmo's already where.

[Talias006]

p.s. Blizzard didn't make mmo's item based, mmo's already where.

This is definitely true.
MMO's were itemized back in EQ and like many MMO's after, the story is not told solely with PC's, but with treasure.

If anything, Blizzard hastened this way of story-telling with the effulgent plethora of items in Diablo 2, which spawned a good many clones and similar themed RPGs.
Oblivion/Skyrim, anyone?

[HungarianRhapsody]

Your unequivocal position is that less grind is good. Therefore removing all grind is the most good. How is that an unreasonable extreme? You don't like grind. You think less grind is good. Therefore BY YOUR OWN VIEWPOINT you believe in removing all grind.

It's your point (your actual point, as opposed to whatever point is it you think you're making but aren't). I'm only illustrating how absurd it is.

Removing all grind doesn't mean removing all play, though.

Grind is when you play for the acquisition of a specific item/set of items rather than simply because the quest(s) that you're playing are fun.

Grind is certainly not a desirable quality in any MMO even if you might considered it a necessary quality.

[Bunker]

So gamers farm till thier fingres bleed to get an item. Or 10 items, or 100 items. Every run is on Casual, where they are over equipped and out numbering the mobs in the quest 10:1.

By the end of the evening, they have farmed all the quests, looted all the items, all the while you are struggling to beat your first quest on Elite.

Should you deserve the item more than the others simply because you "choose" to run Elite?

Answer: Who cares! Let everyone play the game they want to play. You play your way, and they play thier way. Why should items someone else have change your experience?

As for the obvious Dreaming Dark example, and the multitude of casual LFMs for Ioun Stones.... Anyone that knows the quest will tell you that the difference between normal and casual is so minimal, that you really can't tell the difference. So if they removed casual, everyone would just run the quest on normal, all the LFMs would be for normal difficulty, and the end result would be the same with everyone having the ioun stones they want.

Happy farming

-Bunk

[Mastese]

Not a lot of people really understanding what I tried to convey here, which is what I tried to clarify in my follow-up post. I can appreciate that some of the responses based on this misunderstanding. As always, I do appreciate the differing points of view offered regardless.

-Mastese

[Aurora1979]

I don't see the problem here.

Who cares what difficultly other people are farming on. If you want to run it on hard or elite instead of casual go for it. How someone else, in another group, is playing shouldn't effect you at all.

The only real argument I can see, along these lines, is the "I got it the hard way and its not fair other people can now get it easier"

But thats a pretty lame outlook, which I dont think you were making.

But yea...

/not signed... or

/not agree.

[Kinerd]

So then what is the standard? 1 run? 5? 25? You want less than 100, how about 98?

When does it start to be a grind?

There is no standard. Be of the mindset "100 runs per item is dumb, less grind is good", and the rest will come out in the wash. It is clear that the developers are thinking this way, and the results are both good and meeting with approval. For instance: tomes are retained on TRs, raid loot is not being used for Greater Halfling Bane, previously rare items are becoming less so in a somewhat novel way. These are answers that come from the right mindset.

98 is the sort of answer that comes from the mindset "I disagree with what this other person said". There's nothing inherently wrong with that mindset, but I respectfully submit that is not useful from a fundamental game design perspective.