Devs: Why is it always a priority to hurt players, and not to help them?

[sephiroth1084]

Im just gonna put this out there, and then show myself out of the thread. In less than a month, people had completely leveled all of the epic destinies released. according to the wiki, that is almost 2mil xp per destiny, so close to 20 million xp in a month. that is equivalent to about 4.5 full TR 2+ lives, in a month. Maybe turbine thought that people were completing all of this far too quickly, so they reduced the amount of xp that challenges give, because the challenges give the same amount of xp on the 2nd run as they do on the 200th run. Remember, they have to make the content they release last at least long enough for them to fix some of the major bugs in it, and develop and release new content, or else they will lose players who have nothing to do.

That might fly if lots of people were doing this, but it was a small number of hardcore gamers--the same people who TR in a day or two. They didn't nerf the XP for them, they nerfed it for everyone. More importantly, though, they haven't addressed any of the areas where XP is absolutely abysmal.

There's simply no argument to support this action from Turbine, not with so much else wrong with the game that should have been a higher priority, no matter how easy it was to change the value here.

[Eladiun]

When the expansion first released the level of overall activity in the game increased dramatically as players who had gotten tired of the same old same old came back to the game. It has been steadily dropping since then as these same players realize it's business as usual at Turbine leave the bugs and lag and brutally assault anything fun and productive. I've never seen a group so skilled at alienating their own player base. End game players with multiple characters have millions upon millions of XP to grind so why not remove one of the best ways to quickly build a group and get some XP. Lets add 15 minute runs to all the quests because that's what DDO players were clambering for. Let's add another random loot mechanic because the previous ones were so beloved. Let's add ridiculously annoying and repetitive background sounds to the world and to player aura's. let's add greensteel deconstruction like the players have begged for, for years, but we will make the component ludicrously rare.

It becomes more and more obvious that the people developing this game don't play it, don't understand it, and fail on the most basic levels at creating a fun and productive environment for players.

[Aldieb]

when the expansion first released the level of overall activity in the game increased dramatically as players who had gotten tired of the same old same old came back to the game. It has been steadily dropping since then as these same players realize it's business as usual at turbine leave the bugs and lag and brutally assault anything fun and productive. I've never seen a group so skilled at alienating their own player base. End game players with multiple characters have millions upon millions of xp to grind so why not remove one of the best ways to quickly build a group and get some xp. Lets add 15 minute runs to all the quests because that's what ddo players were clambering for. Let's add another random loot mechanic because the previous ones were so beloved. Let's add ridiculously annoying and repetitive background sounds to the world and to player aura's. Let's add greensteel deconstruction like the players have begged for, for years, but we will make the component ludicrously rare.

It becomes more and more obvious that the people developing this game don't play it, don't understand it, and fail on the most basic levels at creating a fun and productive environment for players.

+1

[Kadran]

Take all the exp that was cut from all the challenges, and add it to the existing exp you get for running Threnal East 3. No one would run it, but at least the few who do won't feel as terrible about it.

[teh_meh]

Been stuck in TR land since before MotU launched. Been watching friends get to LVL 25 on multiple toons (and cap-out multiple destinies) in just a few weeks.

Challenges are supposed to be a fringe feature, not a staple. They are gimmicks, like pet companions.

I don't understand this thread at all.

[Thrudh]

I appreciate your faith in my posting skills, or what have you, but I am really frustrated, and have been for a long, long time. Remember my post up about no longer having faith in the dev team? http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=354459

It started to look like Turbine was making a turn-around with the Xpack, but I was wrong to believe so. The Xpack was released with numerous bugs. A lot of player feedback in both the closed and open Betas was ignored (and I'm someone who has seen more than one of his suggestions implemented). Players have been complaining, to some degree, since Beta that the XP for leveling Epic Destinies was excessive when you start looking at Twists. You have a thread up about how tedious and not fun it is to work through additional destinies that you don't really have an interest in. MANY people pointed out how unfair it was to not give players a choice of any destiny to start with, and that it's excessively grindy for some characters to get from their sphere to the ED they actually want.

Now, Turbine nerfs one of the few really worthwhile places to get XP.

I'd been trying to get the devs to reduce the ridiculous grind for epic tokens for almost a year, with a thread up, numerous posts in other threads, and private messages sent to some devs (and had been talking with Genasi about it a bit before he got busy with other stuff), and instead of addressing the issue, they half abandon the system, and then make it over twice as tedious!

We have bugs that have been around for well over a year, some close to two years, like some bard songs not affecting WF, and others not affecting PMs. We've gained tons of new ones, including a bug that prevents quest completions, which I STILL haven't seen a dev comment on, so I don't know if it's been fixed, or whether I can expect to have another quest randomly not acknowledge the completion of a necessary objective at some point.

Every time they take a step in the right direction, they take two in the wrong one. Or they do things halfway.

HELL YES I'M FRUSTRATED!

I mean, look at this ****! Amrath XP has sucked since Amrath came out, before TRs were out and strapped for ways to level from 17-20. That was over 2 years ago. Cannith quest and raid XP was even worse, and makes running the things on anything but Casual for a flag for the raids, or once on elite for favor, largely worthless. That came out over 6 months ago. There have been numerous threads and posts regarding these, and other examples, yet nothing has ever been done about them.

We had too much XP out of a couple of challenges for a few weeks, and they got changed right quick! How can you not see the double standard there? The way Turbine prioritizes its time?

This is a great post with great concrete examples and no over-exaggerated generalizations.

[Thrudh]

It's unfortunate that the Turbine devs are sometimes put in that light by posters, but it is understandable. When a player is angry, he usually just lashes out with little thought. He's really angry at the company as a whole but usually can't think through his frustration and will make unnecessarily antagonistic remarks. The title of the thread really shouldn't single out the Turbine DEVS, because it's more than them, by far.

However, Seph has usually come across far more level headed indeed. So for him to stray into the "bashing" game (even unintentionally, I think his language is even harsher than he intends really) is a decent indicator of the general "pulse" of some gamers. Extremes will exist of course, running the spectrum of enjoyment to rage.

But looking at it all as a whole, the problem is that the Devs were undoubtably rushed. Whatever happened, it seems things had to be released in a tentative state. Physics and mechanics toyed with but admitted to be in greater state of "flux" (the Turbine "we'll be keeping an eye on x(Monk AC, Feat changes, player to-hit, grazing hits, damage modifiers, Heal power, Epic Hard difficulty, leveling XP, how things proc, etc) and we'll be adjusting "things" when we feel it needs "balance". And thus the game is a "yoyo" right now.

Many of these things can be understood and "accepted". However, in addition to the vast amount of changes and additions which cause the bugs, the company as a whole seems to be trying to "cash in" further.

Stuck with unfunctioning abilities?
Pay to LR.

Need a lot of XP to get to the abilities you want?
Purchase XP pots.
Purchase items that "circumvent" requirements.

Thus even though the company as a whole acknowledges (grudgingly) that things are bugged and incomplete, they then keep all of the hurdles intact (and in some cases augment the hurdle) that they should have lessened or suspended.

In the long run it all boils down to one question for me:
Since Turbine knows the state of the game's incomplete and bugged mechanics, why are they not doing more to help players find ways to adjust? Why are the ways to alleviate some of the problems with the mechanics and rules changes and bugged abilities to have to use TP?

With as little feedback as is given in that regard, it's sort of hard not to consider Turbine, as a company, to be a greedy so-and-so. Or just clueless.
And it's hard to decide which is worse.

Also a great post. Hopefully the devs will read these.

[rayworks]

This isn't just
If players are benefiting from something not WAI, gaining more offensive, or better gear, or saved time, or anything, you can bet your ass it's going to get fixed within a patch or two/by the next update at the outside, whereas if something is causing us problems, it's just as likely to sit unacknowledged and unresolved for months.

Handwraps, anyone?

[GrampaBill]

I mean, look at this ****! Amrath XP has sucked since Amrath came out, before TRs were out and strapped for ways to level from 17-20. That was over 2 years ago. Cannith quest and raid XP was even worse, and makes running the things on anything but Casual for a flag for the raids, or once on elite for favor, largely worthless. That came out over 6 months ago. There have been numerous threads and posts regarding these, and other examples, yet nothing has ever been done about them.

We had too much XP out of a couple of challenges for a few weeks, and they got changed right quick! How can you not see the double standard there? The way Turbine prioritizes its time?

This is what I've been thinking since the first xp nerf much less the second. I'm not mad about the challenge XP nerf because that's not how I've ever leveled. I'm mad about how quickly they were able to do it. And the reason it was done so quickly? Because it was only a switch that needed to be flipped. How can anyone looking at how much XP they need to flip the last few epic levels ever feel anything other than irritation?

For any player to defend these actions and inactions is incomprehensible to me. One of you defenders role play Turbine for me and answer this: Since it's been proven XP rewards are so easy to change, why haven't you changed Amrath and Cannith XP?

[deahamlet]

Im just gonna put this out there, and then show myself out of the thread. In less than a month, people had completely leveled all of the epic destinies released. according to the wiki, that is almost 2mil xp per destiny, so close to 20 million xp in a month. that is equivalent to about 4.5 full TR 2+ lives, in a month. Maybe turbine thought that people were completing all of this far too quickly, so they reduced the amount of xp that challenges give, because the challenges give the same amount of xp on the 2nd run as they do on the 200th run. Remember, they have to make the content they release last at least long enough for them to fix some of the major bugs in it, and develop and release new content, or else they will lose players who have nothing to do.

Excuse me, people I know do a life in 3-5 days. And only do it 3 lives in 3 weeks because of the 1 week timer on TR! And they do not ever touch challenges.
The repeat penalties combining heroic and epic is what drove people to run challenges for epic XP. And they still ran all the epic quests, especially in the new pack on normal/hard/elite several times. Yeah, first time bonus was rather large, they could have fixed THAT a little, but instead they messed up all the challenges... particularly the new ones that most are not so solo friendly (well neither are some of the House C ones) AND the rewards are not something anyone wants.

Complaining that uber people already burnt through all the EDs is useless. They will always do that, if not with challenges, with something else. You can't go nerfing everything everywhere to fix the fact that people who know the game very well, have all the uber gear and know how to crank up max XP/min go through the content super fast!

And again, OP didn't sound to me like it was just about the challenges but other nerfs while we sit with bugs that should have never made it in the live version of ANY respectable game.

[Chai]

The number of things that work in this game -vs- the number of things that do not work point to the team that puts this all together and maintains it being far better at this than any forumite has given them credit for.

One thing they teach people in game development courses: In most cases, if the audience you are delivering to does not notice or comment on X feature you developed, that job was done correctly. The sad case of affairs is people only get this riled up when they are not satisfied. I assure you, if people were as loud and passionate about every feature that worked as they are about features that dont work, we would all sound like a buncha hippies at a patchouli convention.

The fact that MMO companies nerf things that help players while neglecting to adjust things that do not for far longer is as old as MMOs themselves. I remember in EQ1 there was a weapon called Wurmslayer. Only items of size category "large" or smaller could go into a bag, and many peopel had a bag in every inventory slot. Wurmslayer was a "giant" item, which did not fit into bags. One exploit was to ask people to put their Wurmslayer into the trade window so you could see its stats, then cancel the trade. Since the owner of the weapon had bags in every slot and wurmslayer couldnt fit into the bag, the weapon dropped to the ground, and the exploiter immediately picked it up, then transferred it to a mult toon in the same fashion. This went on for two years, with players constantly griping about it, and nothing being done about it.

Then the next expansion came out. A fantastic new feature allowed us to go to a specific zone called nexus and put our toon into vendor mode. People could buy items off your toon at the prices you set the item at. It was quickly learned that a player could dupe a wurmslayer by putting themselves into vendor mode, opening a trade window with wurmslayer in it, creating a "disappears when logged off" item similar to summoned arrows or bolts in DDO to fill that 'giant" inventory slot, then trying to trade the wurmslayer, letting it fall to the ground, picking it up with their alt toon on another account, then logging off and back on. The wurmslayer would be returned to the first toon that owned it as well as be in the hands of the second toon that owned it. Within hours of players duping this weapon, the servers came down for "no apparent reason" - when they came up again, the only difference in the game was that wurmslayers were now classified as large wrapons instead of giant and they all fit into bags now - a move that could have been made years ago to stop exploits that hurt players. The minute that little attribute helped players, it was a high priority issue, high enough to drop the servers with 5 minutes notice in a system wide message.

Understand theres no justification here - just that after debacles like this in 1999 - early 2000s, Im not surprised anymore when I come accross this sort of thing, knowing full well that the current in game issues hurt alot of players, but if I found a way to make 100kpp a minute because of one of these bugs that the in game DMs suposedly dont have logged as a known issue, the emergency patch would be tomorrow morning.

[HAL]

Im just gonna put this out there, and then show myself out of the thread. In less than a month, people had completely leveled all of the epic destinies released. according to the wiki, that is almost 2mil xp per destiny, so close to 20 million xp in a month. that is equivalent to about 4.5 full TR 2+ lives, in a month. Maybe turbine thought that people were completing all of this far too quickly, so they reduced the amount of xp that challenges give, because the challenges give the same amount of xp on the 2nd run as they do on the 200th run. Remember, they have to make the content they release last at least long enough for them to fix some of the major bugs in it, and develop and release new content, or else they will lose players who have nothing to do.

The fact that some powergamers achieved that has nothing to do with the rest of the player base.

[HAL]

It was about 2 weeks ago, when they put in that 500 bonus points for F2P accounts, and people abused the heck out of that, and they blanket banned F2P accounts from trading any store item.. that was when it hit me.

"They don't think things through"

The other option is that they are doing it on purpose. No, this is not some kind of conspiracy theory but capitalism. If they make something "too good to be true", then lots of people will get it. At some point they decide that they've gotten as much benefit from that as they can without going past the tipping point, so they nerf it.

Look at the Challenges, they gave them a huge amount of XP so many players wanted to run them for TRs, etc. How many people purchased the Challenge package so they could take advantage of this? Now there is new content so they nerf the XP. When Artificers were first introduced, they were overpowered so everyone would want to play an artificer and buy the race. Now they've got a new class (Druid) so they nerf Artificers.

While I hope Ungood is right, I think this company would not have come this far if they were really as clueless as he describes...

[DethTrip]

You have a consistent policy of quickly addressing anything that benefits players, while dragging your heels or outright ignoring anything that hampers us. Why? WHY!?

^This is EXACTLY what irks me!!

[krackythehoodedone]

Not with you here Seph.

I mean come on. With LFM's up advertising 40K exp for five minutes saying ''get ur free xp'' etc etc what did you expect was going to happen.

I think the problem is Turbine overcooking stuff. If you give somebody something they like and then take it away they will scream the house down. Its just natural. Really Turbine should have thought a bit more about the XP reward before going live with it. However once they had realised their mistake i dont blame them for cutting it back.,

Ive managed to get to 24 and on my second destiny and ive never done a challenge, just with my couple of hours a night so i dont think its particularly onerous at all.

[DeafeningWhisper]

The number of things that work in this game -vs- the number of things that do not work point to the team that puts this all together and maintains it being far better at this than any forumite has given them credit for.

One thing they teach people in game development courses: In most cases, if the audience you are delivering to does not notice or comment on X feature you developed, that job was done correctly. The sad case of affairs is people only get this riled up when they are not satisfied. I assure you, if people were as loud and passionate about every feature that worked as they are about features that dont work, we would all sound like a buncha hippies at a patchouli convention.

The fact that MMO companies nerf things that help players while neglecting to adjust things that do not for far longer is as old as MMOs themselves. I remember in EQ1 there was a weapon called Wurmslayer. Only items of size category "large" or smaller could go into a bag, and many peopel had a bag in every inventory slot. Wurmslayer was a "giant" item, which did not fit into bags. One exploit was to ask people to put their Wurmslayer into the trade window so you could see its stats, then cancel the trade. Since the owner of the weapon had bags in every slot and wurmslayer couldnt fit into the bag, the weapon dropped to the ground, and the exploiter immediately picked it up, then transferred it to a mult toon in the same fashion. This went on for two years, with players constantly griping about it, and nothing being done about it.

Then the next expansion came out. A fantastic new feature allowed us to go to a specific zone called nexus and put our toon into vendor mode. People could buy items off your toon at the prices you set the item at. It was quickly learned that a player could dupe a wurmslayer by putting themselves into vendor mode, opening a trade window with wurmslayer in it, creating a "disappears when logged off" item similar to summoned arrows or bolts in DDO to fill that 'giant" inventory slot, then trying to trade the wurmslayer, letting it fall to the ground, picking it up with their alt toon on another account, then logging off and back on. The wurmslayer would be returned to the first toon that owned it as well as be in the hands of the second toon that owned it. Within hours of players duping this weapon, the servers came down for "no apparent reason" - when they came up again, the only difference in the game was that wurmslayers were now classified as large wrapons instead of giant and they all fit into bags now - a move that could have been made years ago to stop exploits that hurt players. The minute that little attribute helped players, it was a high priority issue, high enough to drop the servers with 5 minutes notice in a system wide message.

Understand theres no justification here - just that after debacles like this in 1999 - early 2000s, Im not surprised anymore when I come accross this sort of thing, knowing full well that the current in game issues hurt alot of players, but if I found a way to make 100kpp a minute because of one of these bugs that the in game DMs suposedly dont have logged as a known issue, the emergency patch would be tomorrow morning.

Then there are other MMOs, one I used to play before DDO was Raganrok online, crappy graphic, limited costumization but a great community and exceptional dev/GM team.

Every time an "exploit" took place the servers where rolled back the same day and exp/loot bonus where added for the trouble caused, even on the fre servers.

Weekly maintenance of the servers with bug fixes, class balancing and many events.

You bought an item with real money and would like to have it shipped to another toon? Put a ticket within a few days a dev will in-game ask if you have the time to do the trade now and conduct the trade.

I remember losing a weapon because it had the wrong lvl description on it and I ended upgrading it beyond it 's safe limit, I put up a ticket and a few days later a dev talked to me in-game to give me my weapon back. That's not all, the week later the maintenance had in the notes a fix to the description of the weapon.

Because a single player out of millions had found a bug and lost an item they added it to the weekly maintenance... I have yet to put up a ticket in DDO where the answer is anything but "sorry, not a known issue, no fix, go away".

I love DDO, but the customer service is abysmal.

[LafoMamone]

Not with you here Seph.

I mean come on. With LFM's up advertising 40K exp for five minutes saying ''get ur free xp'' etc etc what did you expect was going to happen.

I think the problem is Turbine overcooking stuff. If you give somebody something they like and then take it away they will scream the house down. Its just natural. Really Turbine should have thought a bit more about the XP reward before going live with it. However once they had realised their mistake i dont blame them for cutting it back.,

Ive managed to get to 24 and on my second destiny and ive never done a challenge, just with my couple of hours a night so i dont think its particularly onerous at all.

No offence, but you might as well have said "TL;DR".

We are four pages in, and people still think this is about challenge XP.

[Xynot2]

We are four pages in, and people still think this is about challenge XP.

No.. it's just the hottest example at the moment. Seriously... if you're working on the engine of your car and it comes to your attention that the tires need rotating, are you gonna stop what you're doing to rotate the tires? Are you going to immediately tell the person that brought it to your attention what your game plan is? And if they whine that you are ignoring them or demand a response from you, are you going to be more likely to tell them?

You know what your response will be... come on... say it..... SAY IT!


*SOON*

[Ungood]

While I hope Ungood is right, I think this company would not have come this far if they were really as clueless as he describes...

You have consider you could not have asked for a better foundation to an MMO then.. Dungeon and Dragons, I mean really, D&D, the original iconic role playing game, now in MMO format.

To be honest, I would have assumed this would have rivaled WoW if not crushed it on the fact that is was Dungeons and Dragons, given how long standing and vast the consumer base for such an item is. It would have taken effort to kill such a creation, or made anything less then a stellar success from it.

I kid you not when I say DDO could have been, bar none, the best MMO that was ever made.

I mean that, ever made. It has so many features that truly make it redefining like real time combat, dynamic complex character building, every iconic class and races at their disposal, every monster from the entire Dungeons and Dragons game system at their finger tips, and lets not forget the brand name of Dungeons and Dragons, which carries with it a near cult like following of fandom.

I make no joke that DDO with all it has going for it, should have been this juggernaut in the gaming world, the MMO everyone tries to contend with, this catastrophic masterpiece to show the entire gaming world what "Truly Awesome" is.

But, for the most part, the game is riddled with bugs, constant unfavorable changes that tend to do nothing but decrease enjoyment of game play, poor planning and execution of revisions and changes, lack of completed development in the form of everything seems to be rolled out half finished, just over all, plagued with all the downward issues that pull away from the fun of the game.

It just seemed like that with all that DDO has going for it, they have to be clueless at the wheel and don't know how to make this diamond shine.

[Raithe]

*SOON*

I agree, but I don't think this even hits the heart of the matter.

I've been reading the forums for a very long time, and have been posting almost as much. The problem is, largely, that there are a massive number of forumites who are simply self-aborbed and completely clueless. What they think is crucial and of utmost importance isn't. Not even close. And what they think is relatively harmless and beneficial to them - also isn't. It's gamebreaking and devastating to anyone who, say, doesn't like running challenges and wants to find a group for a linear quest.

I'm not going to start belittling people, but unlike Thrudh and eonfreon, I find this thread to be completely consistent with the posting habits of the thread creator.