If the game is too easy then . . .

[Postumus]

I partially agree, but there is a question of degree. Just how challenging does it have to be, though? If the single ultimate best player in DDO across all servers finds it non-challenging, is it too easy? What about if, say, 10 players do? Or 1%? Or 10? "If Elite is achievable for more than X% of players, it's too easy." What is X?

Obviously X=100 is too high, it's too easy. But if X=0.001? I'd that's too low, and it's too difficult.

This is the what a lot of forum posters who complain about difficulty (hard or easy) lose sight of. They are too subjective and personal when it comes to what is 'easy' or 'hard' or 'fast' or 'slow.'


Also what folks seem to forget is that while Turbine does not report the numbers to us, they have statistics showing them who runs what, how long it takes, etc. Just because a large percentage of frequent forum posters can run wiz king elite in under 10 minutes with zero deaths does not mean that is the 'average' time for the player base to run it, nor should everything be scaled to satiate this group.


The reverse is also true. Joey Newnew coming to the forums to post that Water Works is 'impossible' on elite should also not be catered to.

[Viisari]

Also what folks seem to forget is that while Turbine does not report the number to us, they have statistics showing them who runs what, how long it takes, etc. Just because a large percentage of frequent forum posters can run wiz king elite in under 10 minutes with zero deaths does not mean that is the 'average' time for the player base to run it, nor should everything be scaled to satiate this group.

Why is the average player relevant in any way when we're talking about Epic Elite?

EE is meant to be the hardest difficulty in the game, there are three other difficulties for the more average players. The fact is that with epic destinies in the game, EE isn't really a challenge with the exception of two raids, and in the case of those two raids the rewards are not worth the effort unless you have an absolutely perfect group and plan.

[Cashiry]

Wrong since what I am saying is the playerbase created new playstyles. I'm not saying anything about if stealth is good or bad in the current game. Of course DDO is not as good as Thief in the sneak dept..because no game since then has been as good at stealth.

Hmmm... I think the Burglar class in LotRO in pretty **** good.. Prob the best stealth class in any MMO in my opinion....

[QuantumFX]

Wrong since what I am saying is the playerbase created new playstyles. I'm not saying anything about if stealth is good or bad in the current game. Of course DDO is not as good as Thief in the sneak dept..because no game since then has been as good at stealth.

You’re still missing the point. My complaint has absolutely nothing to do with the effectiveness of stealth in DDO vs. Thief.

It has everything to do with the fact that I have a list of quests that got changed*, after someone used stealth or invisibility to complete it, to ensure that you could no longer use stealth or invisibility to complete it. (ex. Monastery of the Scorpion and End of the Road)

I can’t find a single quest that has ever been changed* to make stealth more effective.

That is why your example is horrible.

* When I use the term “change”, I’m referring to adding entirely new functions to a quest. Fixing the doors in “Blockade Buster” to not break stealth is not a “change” in this context, it’s a bugfix. (The problem was noted well before the quest went live.) Adding in unnecessary mobs (In the case of Monastery of the Scorpion) and pointless objectives (See the Lammania release notes about End of the Road.) are changes.

[Coldmurder]

I have seen a few players who have joined my pug groups say the quest is to easy, or that they just soloed that quest. Then most of those players who join in my group, they try to run ahead and die. Then they complain up a storm, oh i just did this quest, its not fair he tripped me, oh he knocked me down not fair. I would have killed him if he didn't hold me, or just some other lame excuse.

These folks will never be satisfied, they will complain if they do die and then complain if they don't, I have learned in my lifetime there are those types of people out there, and not to worry about them, and to find others who are not like them.

After talking to these super ego folks who join my pug group, a few of the same things come from them.

1. They do not do the whole quest=aka do not do all the optionals.
2. They use countless mana pots to do 1 quest.
3. they exploit - you can call them cheats, glitches, or shortcuts.
4. They spend tons of money to have the best of everything

First some of these people will never be happy. So no need to talk to them any further. No game will ever make them happy.

To spec out for a specific quest and to farm out a specific quest well your the one running your toon why do it if you spec out for a specific quest that makes it that easy.

Dont use mana pots

Pug more often, players who do not know the quest so well or don't have the right gear will make it harder. The quest is scaled, so if your all geared out and solo a quest its scaled at 3, but add some not geared out pugs having a group of 6 players with each adding 3 to scale you will have a harder quest.

Yea those players bragging they solo and then join my pug group and die, never mention the scaling, and you know what the biggest thing i found out, most of those who do think they are "geared out" and complain the game is easy and they solo then die in pug groups, really didn't know the game.

Turbine shouldn't try to cater or adjust the game to these select few who only try to run a toon in such a way and have time to complain. We the many other players in the game are out enjoying the game and dont have time to post in forums. We are to busy in quests and cant find enough time per day to quest. Work and sleep get in the way of game play all the time.

Most of these players by the way are sorcs. Funny thing is when you ask them why they don't try to run a different type of toon, they say, oh that build is gimped, or its weak. Well again they want the strongest toon out there and complain they made the game so easy for themselves.

And btw some of the most fun I have had, and those who were in my groups at the time also agreed, was when we did the quest without totally geared out players, with players who didnt know the quest well, or we didnt have the perfect group, and we either failed or barely completed the quest.

Run a group without a caster in it dotting, holding, or insta killing. See how hard that gets lol

Or make a group with the first 6 people who join no matter what their build is.

(Who is doing the traps-says all the non trappers) LOL
(What no healer? what what how we gonna heal? [100 potions cure serious wounds])

Don't use the short cuts, cheats, glitches. Dont spec out for a specific quest, dont buy certain weapons in AH. Build your toon with only what you yourself have earned in the quests. Don't farm quests for an item, do each quest on elite per lvl and lvl to 20. (Oh I hate that quest!! Why cause its hard??? then don't complain the game is to easy) Run each quest per lvl on elite then if you need more exp do each quest on hard. There is enough exp to run that way and not to really have to farm out one quest.

A game is a game, if you exploit it to make it easy then its easy, if you play it for how it was designed to be played then you will enjoy it.

[DrDetroit]

I completed Baffords on Expert in 26 seconds. I'm not telling how, but yes there is a bug.
We used to do speed runs in Thief, most levels could be completed surprisingly quickly once you mastered them, but the Lost City...28 minutes was the quickest...the level is just too large and enemy placement and type forces you to fight them.

Framed was a cool mission, but I still think Thief 1 had more charm.


And by Exploits I mean talk about your adventures...not your cheating ways! **** you forum folk...**** you all!!

I really enjoyed Thief. I remember going out and buying Thief 2 even before I had a computer that could run the game. I also bought tue 3rd one but I never took it out of the box.

If it wasnt for DDO, I could go back and play those games.

I always liked tue line from Thief 1, "... but my Landlord reminded me the rent is due."

[Postumus]

Why is the average player relevant in any way when we're talking about Epic Elite?

EE is meant to be the hardest difficulty in the game, there are three other difficulties for the more average players. The fact is that with epic destinies in the game, EE isn't really a challenge with the exception of two raids, and in the case of those two raids the rewards are not worth the effort unless you have an absolutely perfect group and plan.

Who said we're talking only about EE? The thread title says 'the game' not EE.


But whatever, if you want to focus on EE, then who exactly should EE be designed for? The top 10% of the player base? The top 5%? Top .1%? No matter where the cut off is, some people will find it too easy eventually.


You are in a TINY minority if you think EE is too easy, but if you refuse to change your playstyle to challenge yourself that is on you not the developer. It's Turbine's sandbox, how you choose to play in it is your responsibility.

[maddmatt70]

Who said we're talking only about EE? The thread title says 'the game' not EE.


But whatever, if you want to focus on EE, then who exactly should EE be designed for? The top 10% of the player base? The top 5%? Top .1%? No matter where the cut off is, some people will find it too easy eventually.


You are in a TINY minority if you think EE is too easy, but if you refuse to change your playstyle to challenge yourself that is on you not the developer. It's Turbine's sandbox, how you choose to play in it is your responsibility.

What a bunch of b.s. Last I checked this poster is a paying customer. If Turbine wants his business they have to put out a product that he wants to continue to buy. Does it make good business sense to try to make a product that is going to appeal to 100% of the population? No it probably does not make sense, but putting the burden on the customer for making DDO appealing is garbage and you know it dude.

The devs have the option that many have advocated speficially increasing the difficulties on both hard and elite. Having hard actually matter would give players something to shoot for who are not necessarily up to the challenge on elite. There is still normal for everyone else.

[Viisari]

Who said we're talking only about EE? The thread title says 'the game' not EE.

So the op is actually whining that the game is too easy on casual? Oh okay then, sorry for the misunderstanding.

But whatever, if you want to focus on EE, then who exactly should EE be designed for? The top 10% of the player base? The top 5%? Top .1%? No matter where the cut off is, some people will find it too easy eventually.

EE should be designed to challenge characters that are well designed, well geared and well played, otherwise it's neither epic nor elite.

You are in a TINY minority if you think EE is too easy, but if you refuse to change your playstyle to challenge yourself that is on you not the developer. It's Turbine's sandbox, how you choose to play in it is your responsibility.

So if I wish to be challenged I should just gimp myself, not use all the gear I spent years to gather?

How about a no. What me and many of the others I play with find fun in this game is designing and gearing characters, seeing how they perform and what they can do. It's an endless quest for the perfect build, perfect gear set, perfect set of spells and strategies, perfect party setup etc etc. I'm supposed to just throw away all that work if I want a little bit challenge?

Might as well quit the game then because that would kill all the fun.

I've a suggestion: lets turn current epic hard into epic normal and current epic elite into epic hard and then lets do all kinds of funky **** with the new epic elite: lets add more spells to mobs, lets improve their AI, lets add more mobs to quests, more traps, lets give them dangerous weapon effects (paralyze, vorpal weapons, vampiric weapons, level draining weapons, heck, give them a weapon with lightning strike), make them use tactical feats like players do, give them clickies or potions based on what "class" they are or how powerful they are, for example an orange named fighter could cast death ward once, and seeing as it is from a clicky it could have a lowish caster level which means it could also be dispelled, he could also have an item which grants him a permanent blur or some other effect.

There's tons of stuff that could be done to make things more difficult and interesting without actually just raising the stats enemies have but I've seen very little if any of things like these.

[phinius]

This and it has been talked about more than once. I personally would love it, but there is some logistical reasons not to change servers to different types of rules. We did exactly this on AC 1, and there is still and Evil server there...and at times is still a logistical headache.

Long live Darktide!!! haha

[Scraap]

Wrong since what I am saying is the playerbase created new playstyles.

Would that be why deathward was killed off, but the charm nerfs are still in effect for epic warded mobs? Why we've seen massive spikes in straight DPS output, but stat-damage remains a no-no? Because "The Playerbase" is all about nothing but gutting things directly?

Sorry man, you know I respect you, and I can even see why y'all are circumscribing how much you need to balance out given the obvious lack of resources to crosscheck the interactivity, but it's tough to swallow the notion of "supporting variation in playstyle" when anything but the lowest common denominator solution consistently takes it to the knees.

[Chai]

What a bunch of b.s. Last I checked this poster is a paying customer. If Turbine wants his business they have to put out a product that he wants to continue to buy. Does it make good business sense to try to make a product that is going to appeal to 100% of the population? No it probably does not make sense, but putting the burden on the customer for making DDO appealing is garbage and you know it dude.

The devs have the option that many have advocated speficially increasing the difficulties on both hard and elite. Having hard actually matter would give players something to shoot for who are not necessarily up to the challenge on elite. There is still normal for everyone else.

Ahh yes, the paying customer argument. The paying customerS argument is the counter to the paying customeR argument. It goes a little something like this.

This guy is a paying customer, so Turbine should make a game that caters to his needs or he wont play. However, in order to do that, Turbine needs to make the game less fun for a plethora of other paying customers to do so? No. What the singular paying customer needs to do is decide where they fit in regarding the difficulty scheme, and then play it, rather than try to push their agenda on other paying customers to get the toughest difficulty made too easy or the easiest difficulty made too tough. The burden is not on the customer, because Turbine made a game that caters to all experience levels and skill levels. All the customer has to do is find out where they fit, and then strive to get better, rather than have everything changed to please them, at the expense of other paying customers.

[maddmatt70]

Ahh yes, the paying customer argument. The paying customerS argument is the counter to the paying customeR argument. It goes a little something like this.

This guy is a paying customer, so Turbine should make a game that caters to his needs or he wont play. However, in order to do that, Turbine needs to make the game less fun for a plethora of other paying customers to do so? No. What the singular paying customer needs to do is decide where they fit in regarding the difficulty scheme, and then play it, rather than try to push their agenda on other paying customers to get the toughest difficulty made too easy or the easiest difficulty made too tough. The burden is not on the customer, because Turbine made a game that caters to all experience levels and skill levels. All the customer has to do is find out where they fit, and then strive to get better, rather than have everything changed to please them, at the expense of other paying customers.

This is definitely selective reading on your part. The poster that I was responding to was telling this guy that since epic elite was too easy for him he should handicap his characters or his play in order to make it more difficult and thus make DDO more appealing for him. My answer to that is B.S.

I have no idea what you are talking about in your above post other then go selective reading. I said in my post that it is not practical in a business sense to try to make a game that appeals to 100% of the population. Regardless, telling a paying customer that he should handicap his play to make DDO more appealing to him is absolute rubbish. If DDO does not cater to his play he can always move on its after all a free market.

[sebastianosmith]

Ahh yes, the paying customer argument.

<snip>

All the customer has to do is find out where they fit, and then strive to get better, rather than have everything changed to please them, at the expense of other paying customers.

See... You and I aren't so very far apart on most things.

If DDO does not cater to his play he can always move on its after all a free market.

Yes! That hypothetical customer can do that. I would hope a customer would do that in opposition to ranting and whining about how the game is not to their liking - not that you would, specifically - and it should be as they pay money to play the game. You know, unless said consumer has $160 million+ to buy Turbine outright. Then that customer may have whatever he or she desires out of it.

[Aashrym]

I agree with the statement that it shouldn't be up to the players to make the content challenging. That's what difference challenge settings are for. I'm a firm believer that hard should be hard and elite should require groups and teamwork.

Just looking to casually play for completions and fun can be done on casual, normal, or hard for experienced groups.

If I want to play something specifically for more challenge it just makes more sense to choose a hard setting than to strip of gear I've taking years to acquire in some cases.

[blkcat1028]

[snip] I said in my post that it is not practical in a business sense to try to make a game that appeals to 100% of the population. [/snip]

You make a very good point, it is not practical to try to appeal to 100% of the population. However, it would be suicide to create a game that appealed to only 10% of the population.

Turbine has done a pretty good job in creating challenge for the majority of players. The group of people who find EE to be easy would be on the far right of the bell curve.

If you fall into that group, you have mastered DDO. Perhaps, if you want to continue playing DDO and find it challenging, you should change things up a bit. You know, roll up a different type of toon, change your play style, or whatever.

When I achieve the level of uberness that makes EE feel too easy, I plan on playing permadeath.

If the OP is so discontent with the game then your last bit of advice may be the best.

[sephiroth1084]

Again, the problem with difficulty:

The game is, by and large, too easy. At endgame, (ie., lvl 20+), you can either play a too-easy game, or a too-hard game (for most people), because there isn't anything even remotely in the middle there.

Yes, TRing, and planned-out builds, and top-tier loot make the game easier...but these things are also the reasons to be playing the game for most people (and seem to be the carrots waved in front of us by the development team to continue playing their game). Sure, you can ditch your gear, or the character(s) you've been working on for a long time in order to inject some challenge back into the game, but then you're also removing a big chunk of why you're playing the game in the first place--advancement.

Playing through DDO, just for the sake and enjoyment of it, is worth doing two or three times, probably, on different classes to see the storylines unfold and experience the game through different character types. After that, though...then what, if not advancement? And when the game stops making advancement enjoyable?

You end up with people leaving. Again, I haven't logged onto DDO since September or August. Sure, some of that is due to other problems (like the ED advancement system being tedious and not at all fun), but a lot of it is also due to the balance of the challenges presented by the game has been good and thoroughly broken.

[Chai]

As for why would you gimp yourself.... Look, there's no way a game like DDO can keep up with it's small but skilled playerbase. Period.. Not unless you and a few thousand other people want to put out U$1,000 a month. I understand THAT frustration, but it's always been the case not just in DDO....

This is not true by a long shot. In other MMOS its not standard practice for people to beat the new raid an hour or two after release. There has also never been an expectation in most of those games that stuff just needs to be easy peasy so everyone can beat it handedly, then get bored because devs cant crank out content as fast as people people grind it and get sick of it.

I remember EQ and WOW expansions in particular where after 6 months, a handful of guilds had beaten the new raid content, and still could not routinely beat it 100% of the time. The best items on the server are only had by a few players on each server. When people can accept this, Its much easier to create a game where everyone can be entertained.

The issue with DDO players, is people caught easy-button-itis. People feel everyone should be entitled to success 100% of the time, and when this is the expectation, its not possible to keep the skilled players entertained because in order to do so new content would have to be pushed out faster than they get bored with the old stuff, which wont happen with said easy buttons in place. To say this is the case with other games however, is false.

As far as 1k dollars a month. LOL. Other MMOs do it on 12-15 bucks a month. Say what you want about "those other games", but look at how many players they attract and keep playing compared to this game. Its all because the expectation is set right when people begin playing that they company isnt going to dumb the end game down simply because a fraction of its player base on their forums complains about failure being a waste of time.

[Chai]

This is definitely selective reading on your part. The poster that I was responding to was telling this guy that since epic elite was too easy for him he should handicap his characters or his play in order to make it more difficult and thus make DDO more appealing for him. My answer to that is B.S.

Yeah, so someone disagrees with you, and its always something they did wrong (in this case "selective reading") rather than your own point being unsound. This is not true.

I read and understood perfectly. There was nothing selective about it, whatsoever.

I have no idea what you are talking about in your above post other then go selective reading. I said in my post that it is not practical in a business sense to try to make a game that appeals to 100% of the population. Regardless, telling a paying customer that he should handicap his play to make DDO more appealing to him is absolute rubbish. If DDO does not cater to his play he can always move on its after all a free market.

You said it is not practical in a business sense to try to make a game that appeals to 100% of the population? I said that Turbine literally did just that, and succeeded for 6 years with the NHE standard, before people began complaining that the game needs to be molded around their habbits.

You said telling a paying customer that he should handicap his play to make DDO more appealing to him is absolute rubbish. (which I agree with) But then..... If DDO does not cater to his play he can always move on its after all a free market? No. What you actually said in your post was that hes a paying customer and if Turbine wants his business they have to put out a product that he wants to continue to buy. I replied that this is unrealistic when understanding that other paying customers would have to be displaced in order to cater to his needs.

The bottom line is people need to figure out where they fit in, rather than asking for the game to be molded around their needs. This is a realistic view where a game CAN be designed to please 100% of the DDO population. The problem with many people in this games population is they want the game to fit their needs, regardless of how man other users are displaced by that - which is an unrealistic view at best.

[Drekisen]

The way I see it...Turbine has to make a lot of different kinds of players happy all at once.

I'm sorry but when you look at it in the bigger picture you have one of two options when this game has become to easy for you.....


1. Move one
2. Handicap your playstyle

That's pretty much it...Turbine has their hands full enough already let alone trying to cater to the VERY SMALL minority that has over-played....whom are now complaining the game is too easy....sorry...but that only applies to your infinitesimal population.....which will not keep the game running with it's equally infinitesimal funds.