Choice constriction

[SealedInSong]

I love this game and I will not threaten to leave it or any other such silliness based off of some preliminary reports to changes in my gameplay. I think there are a lot of really wonderful things about this enhancement pass, including more SLAs for all classes, new and flavorful abilities, and a much more palatable layout than before.

Now that that's out of the way, my general impression is that I will have fewer choices than ever in how my character evolves.

Off the top of my head:

• I can't choose to have a lot more HP or a lot fewer HP for something else--we're all just getting autogranted HP based off of the purity of our class split.
  Lost: choice of investing in HP, the multifaceted choices of multiclassing splits. Gained: more incentive for everyone to wear the same armor, have the same 20 levels in a specific class, have the same XxCharnamexX, etc.
• I can't choose to specialize in a specific element; instead, I have to pump up my Intelligence base and modifiers and treat every element the same unless I'm a specific prestige.
  Lost: choice of mastering an element or magic type. Gained: "general magic" ability that everyone else has.
• I can't choose to self-heal in specialist/hybrid classes as well as before on account of a lack of positive spellpower lines. Moreover, I can't choose to focus on positive healing unless I spend a ton of points in a prestige that I don't necessarily want as a cleric. Nor can I even invest in negative energy spellpower in the Heal skill as a pale master (though I haven't seen the pale master tree yet, so this may be mitigated somewhat).
  Lost: choice of being self-sufficient to whichever degree I want. Gained: the ability to activate auto attack and be at the mercy of the healbots behind me who are also denied the ability to choose the split of healing/meleeing/offensive spellcasting that they once were.
• I can't choose from a diverse profile of enhancements before I get a capstone; I have to purchase a bunch of trash enhancements to qualify for my capstone.
  Lost: choice of purchasing only the lines that interested me and then getting the cherry on top of the capstone. Gained: a bunch of useless enhancements like Wand Heightening before I get to the pithy core abilities that everyone wants and needs, such as Wand & Scroll Mastery.

I went back over this list to try to remove as much snark as possible because I don't believe it generally helps the community or devs to wade through in most cases, but there's enough alarming material out there in the preview that I can't contain myself.

I'd like to open this thread to specific comments from the community about what choices they've lost and how to regain them. Thanks for your time.

[SealedInSong]

The Stalwart defender tree forces you to specialize too much. Currently on live if you choose the stalwart defender pre, there are still many general fighter type enhancements available. With the tree the way it is on lamania, it screams "I am a tank". It should be pitched more like "I am a fighter that can tank". Fighters, up until now, have been a very versatile class with flexabillity to do many things. This tree takes a lot of that versitility away. The investment needed in this tree to get the benifits of sd of the current live servers makes significant investment in any other tree (eg kensi which would get a bit of the flexibility back) to difficult.

I can only estimate since the live version of my sd has a lot of different gear than the lamania one. That being said, I have spent 54 points in that tree and have got roughly the same benefits from the pretige that I get from the live server version of SD (including its pre-reqs). And as said above, I have lost a lot of flexability. I can't stay in stance to heal myself with scrolls, I no longer have fighter haste boost, I can't buff myself while in stance, I can't raise my tactical feat dcs, I can't get as much strength, and since some strength and con bonuses are linked to having a weapon and a shield rather than a choice of staying in stance, when using a two handed weapon, my strengh (and therefore damage) drops even lower.
To get improved intimidate, I also get increased threat generation. In the old system, I could drop stance if i didn't want to generate additional threat, now I can't get rid of all the additional threat generation even if I drop stance. The above points to one thing for me. Taking choice out of it. Using the tree tells me what to do and what it says is use a sword and shield and don't do anything creative.

When I balance my investments more and use kensi to increase dps (19 points kensi and 37 points SD), the sacrifice in defence is high. Comparing this spit to the live version of my SD, I do less damage, have about 50 fewer hitpoints, have lower ac by about 25 points, lower threat generation that I can't turn off and on completely and higher dodge by 3%

The non-situational benefits of this system over live to a character with 18 levels of fighter amount to higher saves, slightly higher armor class and a bonus to fortification. All good things, but nowhere near a neutral trade in power or flexiblility.


The graphics and system design are very easy to understand and use.

Well-stated, +1

[SealedInSong]

Overall I'm quite disappointed with the way things are looking don't get me wrong there's ALOT of cool stuff especially the some of the abilities within the PrEs. Alot of flavoury abilities as well but 90% of it is backloaded, there's WAY too many abilities that have super long chains of pre-reqs (ie. Wand/Scroll Mastery requires the useless enhancement wand heightening) this on it's own puts a damper on multi-classing.

Than there's the 3 tree limit which most people will say "well Failedlegend 3 classes, 3 trees right?" and that sounds logical but unfortunately you would be wrong. My current main character is a Wizard12/Fighter6/Rogue2 who first off is ticked at the lack of haste boost in fighter but I digress currently I'm using enhancements from obviously Palemaster and Stalwart Defender that's two taken already, than the third would likely be Mechanic to boost my trapsmithing skills. Ok failedlegend you say thats 3 your good...no I'm not I do not have access to Purple Dragon Knight, Wild Mage, Assassin, Archmage, Thief Acrobat or Kensai at the very least based on feedback Kensai will likely obtain Haste Boost so that's one major enhancement I don't have access to that my build currently does and we have even looked at the other 5. In short the 3 tree system cuts me off from enhancements I currently have access to.

Lastly there's the racial PrEs that instead of making interesting racially oriented PrEs (Halfing Talentia Outrider, Dwarven Runesmith, Warforged Juggernaut/Reforged, Elven Bladesinger,etc.) they just copied class PrEs which for my Dwarven Wiz/Fighter/Rogue you'd think would be awesome...which at first glance seems to be but it actually invalidates my reasoning for taking fighter 6 in the first place once again giving less reason to multi-class.

Than after all that as if multi-classing wasn't made unattractive enough the 3 tree system is actually a HUGE boon to single-class builds in that they have access to all 3 class PrEs as well as w/e racial they have instead of 1+ Racial so multi-classes lose another benefit they had over single-classes

So in short whilst there's alot of cool things getting added and I am quite intrigued to see more the new system as predicted is putting a HUGE damper on multi-classing whilst giving a huge boost to Single-Class builds.

Sidenote: I actually like the Perform/Heal/Repair Change but why does my PM have to take Heal? Actually I'm fine with taking heal just make it a class skill for Wizards

Hey Leslie dunno if your still here but this is what your wait and see attitude has wrought...exactly what I told you would happen.

Unfortunately many people were worried that this would happen, and it did.

[SealedInSong]

My Bardcher TR had every single ability point carefully picked to be able to do traps, have UMD, performance, get IPS, decent amounts of HPs and so on... I would need to drop con by 2 to fit more int to get the self-healing I had with enhancements through the Heal skill now, reflex saves in the 50s won't keep me alive with less then 500 hps.

My Nun with a Gun, cleric 18 / arty 2, would also need to drop con or wis to fit more int, 4 points in her case.

This is a change for the worse IMO, we have traded enhancement costs for ability costs, enhancements we could play with at will, abilities require hearts of wood. Then again that may be the point...

Basically any build that aims to do more then what their main class can is been punished, "Oh so you want to heal AND do something else? I don't think so!", "You want to do traps with your rogue/arty lvls? Hell no, you go do what *we* think you're supposed to".

Either give us more skill points or re-think this, you are killing costumization, the *only* thing DDO has on every other generic MMO out there.

Got much harder if the alpha stays as planned

[SealedInSong]

I can't believe that after over a year of development, we get this. This time could have been spent getting existing PrEs to their Tier3, and adding the missing PrEs for classes who are shortchanged. So now we have Tier2 Radiant Servant encompassing the entire tree. There is no Tier3 Radiant Servant.

This isn't the collectible turn-ins, where some relatively small changes can salvage the entire process. This cannot be saved.

This is a clusterbump from start to finish. Even with major changes, it will still be a horrendously flawed disaster that will only serve to limit player creativity, pigeonhole roles, geld multiclassing, and remove much of the satisfaction of the current system where almost everything you pick in your enhancements gave you some kind of improvement. It may not be earth shattering (Energy III -> Energy IV is hardly the stuff of legend for character improvement), but with the occasionally exception of PrE pre-reqs, you always knew that you were getting SOMETHING out of the deal.

With this new system, you are forced to take an endless parade of abilities that are absolutely junk and provide no benefit in order to get the stuff you want. Turbine is also apparently become obsessed with filling our hotbars with junky short-term limited use abilities. We don't want that either. I've already got 14 hotbars on live...I literally do not have the room or the ability to operate with 8 more click abilities.

Almost everything in the current enhancement lists are passive. You select them and they are done and you forget about them. Now to get vaguely similar performance, you have to overly specialize (because build flexibility is eradicated), spent FAR more AP (the overall theme I'm seeing is that people need 110-140 AP to duplicate what 80 AP does now), and then spend fights doing uber micromanagement of super short duration buffs/abilities.

No thank you. Take this entire system, soak it in gasoline, and burn it to the ground. I'll take what we currently have.

I might not go so far as suggesting burning it to the ground since some of the stuff is pretty good, but the portions I bolded do resonate a lot with me.

After hundreds of pages of warning devs not to do certain things like dilute multiclassing or needlessly enforce class roles, I'm still seeing quite a bit of that in the alpha. Not a good sign.

[Dilbon]

Lost: interest to play the current game on Live as after seeing the new enhancements all my characters now feel a bit bland and restricted.

[SealedInSong]

Lost: interest to play the current game on Live as after seeing the new enhancements all my characters now feel a bit bland and restricted.

I'm actually starting to feel a little depressed about this. That's a first for me in DDO.

[SealedInSong]

Well, just to give you an idea of how it actually works.

Lets take my Ranger. She's Human because I wanted the Healing Amp to make the most of her Cure Serious Wounds spell (Which is the best a Ranger can cast).

Do you know how many Action Points we get? 80.

Do you know how many Action Points it costs to get all three Tiers of Healing Amp? 22.

So that leaves 58 Action Points left to spend on the PrE which are equally as expensive.

+1 to Archangel666

[Edit: think about this for a moment, everyone. A human needs to blow more than a quarter of all their action points to get one of the basic highlights of being a human. That's not good.]

[SealedInSong]

We've discussed the changes in 3 separate groups of players and always came to the same conclusion: AP in tree requirements need to go.

If you want to be more restrictive, use more icon arrows, but then please, use them to connect the enhancements sensibly.

Great example of what not to do with arrows are some racial core enhancement lines (human & drow come to mind), where completely unrelated enhancements are being forced as prerequisites (i.e.: drow SR is prerequisite for charisma... why?).

Agree with Bruce--there are so many instances of unrelated, undesired prerequisites for genuinely good enhancements.

Moreover, in the OP where he posted this, everyone agrees that the AP expenditure in tree requirements are a senseless restriction that will only hurt player customization.

[SealedInSong]

Agreed... Some feats and enhancements are absolutely worthless and others are very weak... We should not be forced to take them. If the devs can't tell which is which, fine, leave them all in, but do not make them pre-reqs for good enhancements...

My feedback would be to tone down the number of pre-reqs I see in the new enhancement system... The current system has a few pre-reqs, but the new system has far more...

And that's the WORST part of the enhancement system... And you're adding more... Freedom of choice, remember? That's DDO's big draw... Give us more freedom to choose only the enhancements and feats we want... Don't force us to take weak enhancements and feats.

MAKE IT OPTIONAL. Then people will be challenged to find a way to make it useful, and they'll have fun doing it. If not, they've at least found a unique flavor from which to derive some pleasure.

Making it mandatory just ****es people off and makes you lose money.

[SealedInSong]

the crossbow enhancements affect repeaters.

The current arti capstone being the capstone of the Arcanotecnician tree is bad. The tree is terrible.

Tying Scroll mastery to DC heightening is bad. My current playstyle I never use offensive wands, but use heal scrolls a lot... such a waste.

The Battle Engineer capstone is the same as the current level 6 prestige class.
The Arcanotechnician capstone is the Current capstone. Such a shame that the great capstone will never be taken again, since the tree's so bad. You have to waste so many points in the tree to get the capstone effect which trumps the points you spent previously.

At the very least, now I know that my artificer no longer has to be pure. No way is she going to wade through all the useless stuff in these trees to get a capstone she used to get for good purchases.

[SealedInSong]

I always use Necrotic Ray, one of the best spells out there.
And i would like to keep using it, also yes i always slot neg spellpower for it.

Did i add umd for wiz? no
Would i like to keep maxing it on a PM trapper, definitely yes.
Full use of umd on a PM trapper is good even without the ability to buy or gain Harm scrolls.
I often found myself as support healer and i rather like to be able to continue that.

Agreed on all counts. I have a character in the exact same predicament.

[SealedInSong]

Not sure if you noticed (didn't see anything in this thread, yet), but in the current release notes (dated 4/11), it specifes that the new Spellcraft skill is:

1) An INT based skill. So CHA-based builds (e.g. Bards, Sorcs) seem to be getting the short end of the stick.

2) Is a class-skill for Arty, Bard, Cleric, Druid, FvS, Sorc, and Wiz, and a cross-class skill for "everyone else". Which means that Pally and Ranger also appear to be getting the short end of the stick. And since Pally is a CHA-based build, doubly so.

Granted, this is "alpha", but still - this is how it appears to be ATM.

'Twill be interesting to see how this plays out...

Since he can still winky smile at the end of this statement

[SealedInSong]

Rangers, Paladins and CLERICS all need their devotion lines back.

You shouldn't be hamstrung by having to spend all of your AP on babysitting duties (i.e. Protection and Healing trees) in order to get spell power for your Heal and Cure spells.

and 100% true.

[Chai]

The completely arbitrary three tree limitation appears to be an epic fail when it comes to providing options, which was talked about at length about a year ago, and they were still going ahead with it. Toss that on top of requiring fail enhancements as prereqs (Wand heightening? Seriously?) for enhancements that never used to have prereqs, and its starting to look like options are being taken away when compared to what we are capable of on live, in many cases.

[SealedInSong]

The completely arbitrary three tree limitation appears to be an epic fail when it comes to providing options, which was talked about at length about a year ago, and they were still going ahead with it. Toss that on top of requiring fail enhancements as prereqs (Wand heightening? Seriously?) for enhancements that never used to have prereqs, and its starting to look like options are being taken away when compared to what we are capable of on live, in many cases.

The same foretold mistakes. If they are going to countenance that, the least they can do is take the other advice people are giving such as eliminating the requisite tree expenditure, cutting costs in half, etc.

[SealedInSong]

You know, I was just going over in my head how I could respec my pure Ranger AA to compensate for the loss of Ranger Devotion and I suddenly burst out laughing at the absurdity of it all.

Here's how my thinking went.

Ok, so I need more INT to be able to afford the Heal Skill.

So that means dropping another stat.

Ok, which one?

Well, it can't be DEX 'cause I need that to be able to hit mobs.

Can't be CON 'cause I need that, especially now that I'm down 10 HP from losing the Racial Toughness lines and Rangers don't exactly have Barb levels of HP at the best of times.

Can't be WIS 'cause I need that to have the Spell Points to self heal and use all these bloody new Imbues which cost SP each use.

CHA? Hmm, nah, I start at 10 on that and use UMD, I spent ages making those Greensteel Charisma skills boots, getting the Vile Blasphemy Gloves from Abbot (I HATE Abbot!) and grinding out Cove for the epic Spyglass. Don't want all that work to have been for nothing.

Ok, so that just leaves Strength. *sigh* So my Ranger who was already behind most melee type Classes in damage is going to be even further behind? Meh. Ah! But I have Favoured Enemy stuff to compensate a bit. Oh, hang on a minute! No, I don't! That was all moved to the Tempest PrE, wasn't it? Bollocks.

These kinds of questions are cropping up everywhere, and the answers aren't very pretty.

[SealedInSong]

That only works if the entire game gets rebalanced to account for the across the board reduction in power players are being hit with. If the game isn't tweaked accordingly, you won't be able to forget, because the monsters that were previously hurting you at about the rate that you could heal yourself, or be healed, before are now outpacing your weaker ability, or your character that could previously Balance around a warforged titan before, and heal themselves, now can't do both of those things.

I can almost guarantee you that we are not going to see the game restructured to account for all the nerfing going on with the proposed skill changes/additions and the enhancement butchering. And while a lot of the game kind of needs to be made a little more challenging, the one area that didn't need to be hurt in this way was healing. Yes, healing in DDO is much too powerful, but the game is scaled with that assumption in mind. A lot of content is totally inaccessible to the majority of the DDO playerbase without having a good healer along. This only looks to exacerbate the issue.

Additionally, this simply adds yet another noob trap to character creation and advancement.

but other than that, Seph is correct in that we have absolutely zero details on how to compensate for our global nerf in spellpower.

[SealedInSong]

After looking at the new system and brief testing it felt like a nerf, so I decided to test more thoroughly.
(Snip...)

The 3 different group averages are...
248.9
192.5
202.9
You lost about 50-60 HP on your cures under the new system. If you had a heal 15 item you could probalby make that... 40-50 HP loss.
But as stated by others, Rangers got nerfed.

Any point to this? I'm not seeing one.

[SealedInSong]

Just doing some thinking here. I haven't had a chance to install lama, let alone see if it will let me in yet. I have downloaded it at least. So please correct me where I'm wrong.


Current Live:
lvl 1 : 20% increase to the effectiveness of your healing spells
lvl 4 : 40% increase to the effectiveness of your healing spells
lvl 7 : 60% increase to the effectiveness of your healing spells
lvl 10 : 80% increase to the effectiveness of your healing spells.

Now the new method, assuming I understand what has been written to the forums so far.

Less skill points open to take stuff. This really hurts multiclassers. (but also makes it more true to 3.5 in the fact that it always seemed to lack enough skill points for stuff, honestly. So as far as this goes, I actually find this idea intriguing.)

This is going to force people to wear healing skill items as mandatory. (This is the exact sort of thing Turbine wanted to stay way from. Want proof? Look at the change to the Toughness enhancements.)


As you are getting 1 point per skill lvl. My typical ranger, level 1. (goodbye swim skill)
4 ranks in heal.
+3 healing skill item
+2 from a 14 wisdom score. (this is probably more than your average current ranger in game, baring monkchers.)

Oh look, I have a healing spell power of 9 now as opposed to 20.

Ok, lets have a look at lvl 10 then?
14 ranks in heal
+10 skill item
+6 from a 22 wisdom score. (+6 item, +2 tome, base 14)

I have a healing spell power of 30 vs 80? Seriously?

What is unknown (I haven't had a chance to install lama, let alone see if it will let me in yet. I have downloaded it at least) is if spending AP will grant additional power like full casters (per forums) are going to get.

Big nerf.