A quick update on the Enhancements

[Stanley_Nicholas]

Well I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks such drastic changes aren't needed. I don't get it - there's been no justification for why the core functionality of the enhancement system has to change just because they want to update the GUI. Why is there essentially no discussion about the elephant in the room?

Frankly, I'm almost perfectly happy with how enhancements work on live right now. I can't have everything I want, but I have enough freedom and enough choices to do just about anything I feel like. The live enhancement system is a very robust and functional system at its core. It's true that some of my characters could see an overall relative improvement in the new system, but I also have more than one triple-class multi who I love and it looks like their builds are going to be decidedly worse, maybe even totally broken, partly due to points-spent-in-tree requirements but mainly because of the 3 tree limit.

There's nothing wrong with those builds today. They aren't breaking the game... far from it. One of them is really pretty gimp compared to the FotM builds of today. But they're all fun to play as they are, and as far as I can see there is no logical reason why they should be forced to change.

Devs, I know you have put a lot of work into the new system so far and probably consider it your baby. But that's exactly how we players also feel about our builds, our characters! And the man-hours we've spent on our "babies" vastly outnumber the time you've spent working on yours.

I'm not saying all your work should be discarded. Like I said, there are a bunch of cool new enhancements in there that I would love to play around with (if your Lamma client would ever connect to the server...), and then to have available on live. But really, you are over-complicating things and trying to fix things that absolutely are not broken. Change is fine when justified and when the change is clearly for the better, but the way this new system operates on a high level is, objectively, nothing more than change for the sake of change.

The only thing complicated about the enhancement system on live is the selection interface - it does a poor job of showing you what you need to take in order to build toward a goal at a higher level. But that is just the interface! Under the hood, the system itself is very straightforward. It's just one big tree, with no arbitrary and complicated rules about some things stack and others don't, or once you spend in three parts of the tree then all of the other branches are forever dead.

The new enhancement system is the one that is needlessly complicated and unintuitive, not the old one. Or at least, the old one doesn't have to be. Give us a better interface that shows us that old enhancement tree, and incorporate your cool new enhancements into it. That's the way to fix enhancements and not throw anyone's baby out with the bath water, yours or ours. Unnecessary changes that invalidate anybody's build just aren't the way to do it, and I can't stress that enough.

[Aashrym]

We recognize that one of DDO's strengths is character diversity. We do not intend for this change to remove the viability of Multi-Classing or character diversity. I understand that the current restrictions make Multi-Classing more difficult. This is actually the main reason why I made this thread. I wanted to let you, the players, know that we are asking for your feedback about what adjustments would be most beneficial for you. We want you to help us find the balance where Pure Classed and Multi-Classed characters can thrive side by side.

As for what sort of Lesser Reincarnation will accompany the Enhancement change: I am only a QA tester - unfortunately, I do not get to make those decisions. However, I will pass that recommendation on to the proper departments. I am writing up feedback reports every Monday morning during this Enhancements pass, and I will make sure to include that suggestion!

I disagree with any of players stating that multiclassing is more difficult. There is virtually no reason to make a pure class in this tree system because the only thing we're giving up for multiclassing is the capstone, much like live now.

With the enhancements heavily front loaded like they are the multiclassing gives the same options for advancement in any tree that any pure class does and with the AP costs per tier only one tree will ever have top tier enhancements regardless of the number of trees (edit, maybe 2). Right now multi-classing looks like a huge advantage as far as the enhancement trees go because it opens up the opportunity to select any tree in existence on the build as that one tree in which to focus and still gives us the ability to cherry pick some other abilities.

Given the lack of enthusiasm in some trees the ability to select a favorite tree by multiclassing looks great. With most classes front loaded and the trees front loaded splashing makes it easy. The paladin 14 / cleric 6 with which I was experimenting would be an example for a more healing focused paladin. It doesn't take a lot of splash to have access to almost an entire tree and giving some classes splash value that didn't previously exist. 6 cleric levels gave me everything except 3 PrE abilities and 2 of those didn't hold a lot of value for me. A cleric splash looks like a pretty strong choice to supplement healing on any class now just by using the wand and scroll, and the turn based abilities.

Regardless of the number of "3 trees limitation is stupid" posts it's obvious the actual limiting factor is the AP cost per tier unlock and more trees in which we have no AP to spend is meaningless.

If we go ahead with the racial PrE unlocks we're not even restricting multiclass builds from capstone enhancements to boot.

From what I've seen so far multiclassing has a lot of draw and pure classing only has a draw for more choices for captsones and possibly spell casting ability, much like we see on live now.

What I see changing is which splashes and builds are working and I can see a lot of builds not working relatively as well as before. I would agree with free LR+5's because a change this big does affect a lot of players and that falls into the "fair's fair" category in my mind after the time investment those players made in builds that do become less relatively effective.

[voodoogroves]

I disagree with any of players stating that multiclassing is more difficult. There is virtually no reason to make a pure class in this tree system because the only thing we're giving up for multiclassing is the capstone, much like live now.

In one sense, perhaps not. In the fact that you're possibly going to spend a bucket-ton of points on mess you didn't want just to get there ... yes.

You'll be able to multiclass - but you aren't really multi-classing, you're adding another class so you can access the PRE ... and those themselves are starting to look pretty scripted. If you want to do this PRE tree, you really need to build this way (defenders and shields, for instance). We'll see if they make some changes to make those aspects more optional as opposed to core.

With the enhancements heavily front loaded like they are the multiclassing gives the same options for advancement in any tree that any pure class does and with the AP costs per tier only one tree will ever have top tier enhancements regardless of the number of trees (edit, maybe 2). Right now multi-classing looks like a huge advantage as far as the enhancement trees go because it opens up the opportunity to select any tree in existence on the build as that one tree in which to focus and still gives us the ability to cherry pick some other abilities.

Given the lack of enthusiasm in some trees the ability to select a favorite tree by multiclassing looks great. With most classes front loaded and the trees front loaded splashing makes it easy. The paladin 14 / cleric 6 with which I was experimenting would be an example for a more healing focused paladin. It doesn't take a lot of splash to have access to almost an entire tree and giving some classes splash value that didn't previously exist. 6 cleric levels gave me everything except 3 PrE abilities and 2 of those didn't hold a lot of value for me. A cleric splash looks like a pretty strong choice to supplement healing on any class now just by using the wand and scroll, and the turn based abilities.

Definitely going to be some gems. I've had a few ideas scratched out on virtual napkins previously when we first got news of the racial PREs.

Regardless of the number of "3 trees limitation is stupid" posts it's obvious the actual limiting factor is the AP cost per tier unlock and more trees in which we have no AP to spend is meaningless.

Number of AP is going to be huge. Number of trees could be pretty bad if you wanted to, for instance, be an AA on top of some other class like Bard. I have no idea what the Bard trees look like and with things not in a general tree, that # of trees limit has the potential to be a royal pain.

It isn't an either-or ... "AP costs" or "3 trees" ... right now it's too early to tell what the "biggest" limit is. They are both limits. AP costs are likely easier for the devs to change, so that may be a softer limit. The "3 trees" folks are looking at it from the 12/6/2 side - a 3 class split with moderate investment into at least two of the classes - given that general things right now are split and exclusive to specific PREs, this may mean that build w/ Ninja for monk 6 may not get an animal path, 10k stars, something.

Too early to tell.

If we go ahead with the racial PrE unlocks we're not even restricting multiclass builds from capstone enhancements to boot.

I think the "3 trees' crowd would have even more of a case here.

From what I've seen so far multiclassing has a lot of draw and pure classing only has a draw for more choices for captsones and possibly spell casting ability, much like we see on live now.

What I see changing is which splashes and builds are working and I can see a lot of builds not working relatively as well as before. I would agree with free LR+5's because a change this big does affect a lot of players and that falls into the "fair's fair" category in my mind after the time investment those players made in builds that do become less relatively effective.

LR+5 may do it, though honestly I expect the small splash builds (16/2/2 for instance) are going to adapt much more easily anyway, and may even benefit. It's the 11/9 and 12/6/2 guys that have the most potential impact - and a +5 may not even get it done for them.


Anyway - we're not even talking about how some abilities may move deeper into trees. Fusilade. etc.

[Aashrym]

In one sense, perhaps not. In the fact that you're possibly going to spend a bucket-ton of points on mess you didn't want just to get there ... yes.

You'll be able to multiclass - but you aren't really multi-classing, you're adding another class so you can access the PRE ... and those themselves are starting to look pretty scripted. If you want to do this PRE tree, you really need to build this way (defenders and shields, for instance). We'll see if they make some changes to make those aspects more optional as opposed to core.

And/or evasion, and/or access to skills, and/or bonus feats, and/or whatever else. When I'm multiclassing I'm adding class features access to additional trees. Add a split for a tree isn't really much different than we currently do when we add a split for a specfiic PrE. The real difference is mostly in a few small low level enhancements.

Number of AP is going to be huge. Number of trees could be pretty bad if you wanted to, for instance, be an AA on top of some other class like Bard. I have no idea what the Bard trees look like and with things not in a general tree, that # of trees limit has the potential to be a royal pain.

I already made a bard AA from Elf on Lamma. 18 bard 2 ranger. I spent all of my AP in elf and arcane archer and didn't even touch tempest or sniper (which I had hoped to add some). I couldn't purchase everything I wanted in those 2 trees, let alone more. I also learned that a person needs to be level 25 for the AA capstone doing it through the racial unlocks, and noticed that mental toughness enhancements now adds to spell crit chance.

It isn't an either-or ... "AP costs" or "3 trees" ... right now it's too early to tell what the "biggest" limit is. They are both limits. AP costs are likely easier for the devs to change, so that may be a softer limit. The "3 trees" folks are looking at it from the 12/6/2 side - a 3 class split with moderate investment into at least two of the classes - given that general things right now are split and exclusive to specific PREs, this may mean that build w/ Ninja for monk 6 may not get an animal path, 10k stars, something.

Too early to tell.


Anyway - we're not even talking about how some abilities may move deeper into trees. Fusilade. etc.

This is where I disagree. I clearly can't purchase a lot of higher tier enhancements in the 4 trees we have, let alone adding more. When we talk about moving abilities deeper into trees the reality is nothing is deep in a tree. Fusillade require 11 ap, a feat, and level 6 on live, and would lock out other PrE's for arti if they existed. Fusillade on Lamma currently requires 22 ap, no feat, and 4 artificer levels. The majority of those AP are spent on bonus to hit and damage with crossbows and extra action boosts and are mostly not really lost because I spent on enhancements I wanted instead of enhancements I didn't. The biggest difference is more class levels to play with, more feat room to work with, and a higher cost on AP to get to it.

In your 12/6/2 build example you have 2 PrE's, with whatever bonuses. We are likely going to see 12/6/2 builds and now possibly 12/5/3 builds based on the PrE line and tree structures. Ultimately, we still have things to splash for, even in 12/6/2 builds, and there is still incentive to do so. I can make an 11 ranger, 5 cleric, 4 artificer under the tree system and spend most of my AP in cleric for the healing boosts, use ranger for my archery feats and manyshot, and use artificer for fusillade. 22AP+ in artificer and 42AP+ in healing domain and we only have 16AP- to spend in elf and whatever our 3rd tree is regardless. We already have 4 trees from which to select for that 3rd tree and we're looking at 3rd tier enhancements at best for one final tree.

Replacing any 3 classes and any 3 trees produces the same results when it comes to AP costs. That's why 3 trees isn't the limitation; there's no AP to spend in more trees once we've gone anywhere in what we already have and we can't even fill half of what we have. At best we can ignore top tier class enhancements and get up to 4th tier in 3 our of 4 of the trees we have.

The only thing I could see coming from the not having had the 3 tree limit is the ability to give up the strongest enhancements so that we can have more of the weakest enhancements because we need to invest AP heavily to get anywhere near the best enhancements, and we can only get to them in 1 tree as is. Choosing to spend AP on weak enhancements over stronger enhancements just seems counter productive instead of providing any real benefit.

I find the unlock costs to be very restrictive.

I think you are right in that we don't actually know what will be in those other trees and I agree that not all existing builds are going to come out of this as effective as they have been in the past.

I wrote this while busy, so if anything is seems a bit disjointed or train of thoughts trailed off I'm blaming others.

[voodoogroves]

And/or evasion, and/or access to skills, and/or bonus feats, and/or whatever else. When I'm multiclassing I'm adding class features access to additional trees. Add a split for a tree isn't really much different than we currently do when we add a split for a specfiic PrE. The real difference is mostly in a few small low level enhancements.

Yeah, it's going to be those little things.

"Animal paths are Henshin Mystic? I can't take them on my Ninja Splash unless I add the whole freaking tree?"

People are going to get bent. Those are probably small potatoes, up and until something like 10k stars or some other "core" thing ends up in a PRE that you won't want to splash just to take.

I already made a bard AA from Elf on Lamma. 18 bard 2 ranger. I spent all of my AP in elf and arcane archer and didn't even touch tempest or sniper (which I had hoped to add some). I couldn't purchase everything I wanted in those 2 trees, let alone more. I also learned that a person needs to be level 25 for the AA capstone doing it through the racial unlocks, and noticed that mental toughness enhancements now adds to spell crit chance.




This is where I disagree. I clearly can't purchase a lot of higher tier enhancements in the 4 trees we have, let alone adding more. When we talk about moving abilities deeper into trees the reality is nothing is deep in a tree. Fusillade require 11 ap, a feat, and level 6 on live, and would lock out other PrE's for arti if they existed. Fusillade on Lamma currently requires 22 ap, no feat, and 4 artificer levels. The majority of those AP are spent on bonus to hit and damage with crossbows and extra action boosts and are mostly not really lost because I spent on enhancements I wanted instead of enhancements I didn't. The biggest difference is more class levels to play with, more feat room to work with, and a higher cost on AP to get to it.

In your 12/6/2 build example you have 2 PrE's, with whatever bonuses. We are likely going to see 12/6/2 builds and now possibly 12/5/3 builds based on the PrE line and tree structures. Ultimately, we still have things to splash for, even in 12/6/2 builds, and there is still incentive to do so. I can make an 11 ranger, 5 cleric, 4 artificer under the tree system and spend most of my AP in cleric for the healing boosts, use ranger for my archery feats and manyshot, and use artificer for fusillade. 22AP+ in artificer and 42AP+ in healing domain and we only have 16AP- to spend in elf and whatever our 3rd tree is regardless. We already have 4 trees from which to select for that 3rd tree and we're looking at 3rd tier enhancements at best for one final tree.

Replacing any 3 classes and any 3 trees produces the same results when it comes to AP costs. That's why 3 trees isn't the limitation; there's no AP to spend in more trees once we've gone anywhere in what we already have and we can't even fill half of what we have. At best we can ignore top tier class enhancements and get up to 4th tier in 3 our of 4 of the trees we have.

The only thing I could see coming from the not having had the 3 tree limit is the ability to give up the strongest enhancements so that we can have more of the weakest enhancements because we need to invest AP heavily to get anywhere near the best enhancements, and we can only get to them in 1 tree as is. Choosing to spend AP on weak enhancements over stronger enhancements just seems counter productive instead of providing any real benefit.

I find the unlock costs to be very restrictive.

Unlock costs are the easiest for them to change. Altering the structure may be more difficult, and frankly if someone has spent time on it and thinks of it as their intellectual property, that may be another barrier.

This is the kind of **** we need to bug report.

I think you are right in that we don't actually know what will be in those other trees and I agree that not all existing builds are going to come out of this as effective as they have been in the past.

I wrote this while busy, so if anything is seems a bit disjointed or train of thoughts trailed off I'm blaming others.

You're off the christmas card list now buddy. And I've written you out of my will.

;-)

[Aashrym]

Last I heard, 10K stars was moving to becoming a feat so it will still be accessible. Depending on how things pan out I'm thinking Ranger 12 Artificer 5 Monk 3 or Ranger 12 Artificer 6 Fighter 2 if I don't need monk.

I want to play around with the multi classing more right now instead of waiting until later when more is released.

[Postumus]

And/or evasion, and/or access to skills, and/or bonus feats, and/or whatever else. When I'm multiclassing I'm adding class features access to additional trees. Add a split for a tree isn't really much different than we currently do when we add a split for a specfiic PrE. The real difference is mostly in a few small low level enhancements.



I already made a bard AA from Elf on Lamma. 18 bard 2 ranger. I spent all of my AP in elf and arcane archer and didn't even touch tempest or sniper (which I had hoped to add some). I couldn't purchase everything I wanted in those 2 trees, let alone more. I also learned that a person needs to be level 25 for the AA capstone doing it through the racial unlocks, and noticed that mental toughness enhancements now adds to spell crit chance.




This is where I disagree. I clearly can't purchase a lot of higher tier enhancements in the 4 trees we have, let alone adding more. When we talk about moving abilities deeper into trees the reality is nothing is deep in a tree. Fusillade require 11 ap, a feat, and level 6 on live, and would lock out other PrE's for arti if they existed. Fusillade on Lamma currently requires 22 ap, no feat, and 4 artificer levels. The majority of those AP are spent on bonus to hit and damage with crossbows and extra action boosts and are mostly not really lost because I spent on enhancements I wanted instead of enhancements I didn't. The biggest difference is more class levels to play with, more feat room to work with, and a higher cost on AP to get to it.

In your 12/6/2 build example you have 2 PrE's, with whatever bonuses. We are likely going to see 12/6/2 builds and now possibly 12/5/3 builds based on the PrE line and tree structures. Ultimately, we still have things to splash for, even in 12/6/2 builds, and there is still incentive to do so. I can make an 11 ranger, 5 cleric, 4 artificer under the tree system and spend most of my AP in cleric for the healing boosts, use ranger for my archery feats and manyshot, and use artificer for fusillade. 22AP+ in artificer and 42AP+ in healing domain and we only have 16AP- to spend in elf and whatever our 3rd tree is regardless. We already have 4 trees from which to select for that 3rd tree and we're looking at 3rd tier enhancements at best for one final tree.

Replacing any 3 classes and any 3 trees produces the same results when it comes to AP costs. That's why 3 trees isn't the limitation; there's no AP to spend in more trees once we've gone anywhere in what we already have and we can't even fill half of what we have. At best we can ignore top tier class enhancements and get up to 4th tier in 3 our of 4 of the trees we have.

The only thing I could see coming from the not having had the 3 tree limit is the ability to give up the strongest enhancements so that we can have more of the weakest enhancements because we need to invest AP heavily to get anywhere near the best enhancements, and we can only get to them in 1 tree as is. Choosing to spend AP on weak enhancements over stronger enhancements just seems counter productive instead of providing any real benefit.

I find the unlock costs to be very restrictive.

I think you are right in that we don't actually know what will be in those other trees and I agree that not all existing builds are going to come out of this as effective as they have been in the past.

I wrote this while busy, so if anything is seems a bit disjointed or train of thoughts trailed off I'm blaming others.

Actually your posts have been some of the more cogent, well thought out posts regarding the new system and how multiclassing will change. Less than ten percent of the posts have been this informative. The rest are all DDOOOMM noise from people who spent two seconds glancing at the trees or are just echoing other posters without actually understanding or thinking about the changes.

[Archangel666]

The new bug tool should not interfere with the Forums. However, I believe we are updating our forums.

Do you know how long we have before that goes live please?

I'd like to know how long I have to remove my details from your system and switch to a F2P Account for Forum Posting.

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...f-it-is-Stolen

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/lord-...um-hack/086717

Your track record does not inspire confidence in me.

[Djeserit]

Through all of 2006-2013 I haven't heard anybody calling for the whole enhancement system to be scrapped, but that's what you're doing anyway. Why? There is no need to change the core functionality of a system that, by and large, works great. Just improve the GUI and add the bits that were long promised but are still missing.

Personally I believe they received a lot of exit surveys from Korthos Island from folks who tried the game and found it too complex for their taste.

So they had a meeting and decided to make a lot of effort to broaden the appeal of the game. For example changing 3d6 to 3-18 for people who never played real D&D. This included revamping the enhancement system.

They looked at the surveys and many, many of the potential players had played WOW, Rift and games with tree systems already. So they thought that changing the GUI for enhancements to match those other games would help (this was stated by Tolero in an interview).

They did some research on Screen Resolution, and found that most people could fit four trees on their screen. So they set 3+1 trees as the limit.

Somehow they let the graphics and interface drive the game rules rather than deciding what the rules ought to be and building the interface around that.

The bottom line is that none of their effort to make the game more approachable has really worked. They still get plenty of people who are turned off by the complexity. It's just a complex game. It's a lot like real D&D. Not everybody is going to like that.

Turbine has to balance some tough choices regarding staying true to the original game/appealing to a broad audience. They have my sympathy because I don't think what they are doing is meeting either goal. The new enhancement system is not going to be straightforward to the average WOW player, and look at the reaction from the player base here.

[Stanley_Nicholas]

Personally I believe they received a lot of exit surveys from Korthos Island from folks who tried the game and found it too complex for their taste.

So they had a meeting and decided to make a lot of effort to broaden the appeal of the game. For example changing 3d6 to 3-18 for people who never played real D&D. This included revamping the enhancement system.

They looked at the surveys and many, many of the potential players had played WOW, Rift and games with tree systems already. So they thought that changing the GUI for enhancements to match those other games would help (this was stated by Tolero in an interview).

They did some research on Screen Resolution, and found that most people could fit four trees on their screen. So they set 3+1 trees as the limit.

Somehow they let the graphics and interface drive the game rules rather than deciding what the rules ought to be and building the interface around that.

The bottom line is that none of their effort to make the game more approachable has really worked. They still get plenty of people who are turned off by the complexity. It's just a complex game. It's a lot like real D&D. Not everybody is going to like that.

Turbine has to balance some tough choices regarding staying true to the original game/appealing to a broad audience. They have my sympathy because I don't think what they are doing is meeting either goal. The new enhancement system is not going to be straightforward to the average WOW player, and look at the reaction from the player base here.

That's not much of a conspiracy theory. Seems pretty factually accurate to me, as best as we can tell.

Why not just make the interface mimic that of the Epic Destinies window? All unlocked enhancement trees appear in a list on the left hand side of the window, and you can highlight whichever one you want to view that tree in the main portion of the window. There would even be enough real estate this way to not be forced into 4x5 trees at the maximum, because you're only displaying one tree at a time. And on the right side of the window would be a list of all your selected enhancements, across all trees.

That would have the added benefit of making the Epic Destiny interface more intuitive to players once they reach it.

[BDog77]

Squeak, if you are still reading this thread, is there any answer to the problem that both I and Stanley seem to have? We both have the lama client, but it just hangs at connect (just says waiting). I don't mind having to do a redownload if that's what it takes, but if you follow the link in Tolero's thread about how to access Lamannia, that takes you to the non working pando download. Any thoughts?

[Singular]

That's not much of a conspiracy theory. Seems pretty factually accurate to me, as best as we can tell.

Why not just make the interface mimic that of the Epic Destinies window? All unlocked enhancement trees appear in a list on the left hand side of the window, and you can highlight whichever one you want to view that tree in the main portion of the window. There would even be enough real estate this way to not be forced into 4x5 trees at the maximum, because you're only displaying one tree at a time. And on the right side of the window would be a list of all your selected enhancements, across all trees.

That would have the added benefit of making the Epic Destiny interface more intuitive to players once they reach it.

YES!

Don't reinvent the wheel. Don't give us multiple interface trees - why have racial and class trees interface differently than epic destinies? That's just going to cause confusion. Simplify.

Last, the enhancements we have right now are a tree based system - they're just presented through a lexical interface. If you wanted to make everyone happy, you'd simply turn our lexical interface into a graphical one, buff some races, create class PREs for those that don't have 3 yet, and make sure the enhancements (and feats) all work.

Thanks.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

...

• Yes, the restrictions currently in place are limiting. We need your feedback to help us determine what needs to be adjusted. Obviously finding the correct balance of freedoms and restrictions is important, and we want you to help us find that balance. Go here to view the current restrictions (I will keep this page updated as things get adjusted). Fill out the General Class Enhancement Survey and the General Racial Enhancement Survey! Let us know which particular restrictions are the most painful for you! I am using these surveys to compare your feedback on the restrictions from week to week.

The restrictions aren't just limiting. They're also complicated because there are many kinds of restrictions that interact, as well as interactions with all other parts of the game. And that's a big part of why you're probably going to have trouble figuring out balance questions, even with the current testing, and you'll also probably have trouble debugging things.

Granted, some restrictions need to be in place. But, if you'd like to make things less restrictive, then consider listing out the different kinds of rules in place that limit player flexibility in making choices and reduce or (even better) find ways to eliminate some of the types of restrictions already in place.

Here's a preliminary list, to start:

Class restrictions
Race restrictions
AP points spent in tree restrictions (multiple spending levels matter here, I believe)
Level restrictions (there are several of these)
Lockouts from some choices, based on choices already made
Feat prerequisites
Enhancement prerequisites

You can figure out what the intended outcomes are for each type of restriction; there have got to be many relatively easy-to-find ways to substantially simplify any system with this many complications.

[Aashrym]

The restrictions aren't just limiting. They're also complicated because there are many kinds of restrictions that interact, as well as interactions with all other parts of the game. And that's a big part of why you're probably going to have trouble figuring out balance questions, even with the current testing, and you'll also probably have trouble debugging things.

Granted, some restrictions need to be in place. But, if you'd like to make things less restrictive, then consider listing out the different kinds of rules in place that limit player flexibility in making choices and reduce or (even better) find ways to eliminate some of the types of restrictions already in place.

Here's a preliminary list, to start:

Class restrictions
Race restrictions
AP points spent in tree restrictions (multiple spending levels matter here, I believe)
Level restrictions (there are several of these)
Lockouts from some choices, based on choices already made
Feat prerequisites
Enhancement prerequisites

You can figure out what the intended outcomes are for each type of restriction; there have got to be many relatively easy-to-find ways to substantially simplify any system with this many complications.

Class restrictions are bypassed by multiclassing, race restrictions are based on game flavor components of system materials, level restrictions are far more relaxed on the new system, lockouts make sense for balance, feat prereq's are more relaxed, enhancement prereq's have alwasy existed and make sense as far a characters progress from point a to point b in some of he more complex enhancements.

Complex is still an issue tho, and a lot of that stems from starting out in a complex system the game is based on in the first place.


General feedback so far:

In the actual system design I think I would relax on the AP costs a bit. I'm not sure we really need to make any single tier 5 enhancements in a tree exclusive of any other trees for tier 5 enhancements. A change to 5/10/20/30 instead of 5/10/20/40 in the unlocks opens up more variety for stronger enhancements without providing the ability to hit tier 5 across the board and doesn't lock out as much for anyone, and we have too many 2 AP cost enhancements keeping us from choosing more variety in our other trees. More 1 AP enhancements should be available to alleviate that.

As it is we are really just selecting 1 tree regardless of build style and become limited in our ability to add to that 1 tree on the current cost structure.

Some other quick feed back on the classes and races based on what I've played with so far would be:


1) Clerics need some serious revisiting.

The healing tree really should have been left as radiant servant and really is over-focused. Emphasize healing in it but tone down so much of that emphasis and add more light and undead.

The idea behind protection is a good one, IMO, and I like the intent there, but not a fan of what's in there. That still would have been better as war priest with some melee bonuses for the cleric. That's were divine might belongs, I like the fact they get bonus hit points in that tree, and they could stand to have some nice defensive stances.

Changing the trees to domains loses flavor instead of gaining it.

It looks like the intent was to take components heavily from each but that is problematic giving the costs involved and part of my comments above.

What I would hope for from domains is select a domain at first level, and gain class abilities as bonus feats based on that selection. That still might not be true to PnP but would be a closer representation.

If that's not possible then use the bottom PrE rows for domain abilities based on a first level selection in each tree. That could potentially give 3 domains but since investing in each tree reduces points spent and progress on that bar there is an obvious choice and cost. I think simply allowing each tree an either/or domain the changes the progress along the bottom to adding spells to the spell list would be the way to go if it's possible. That gives more content for the trees by moving the existing stuff into the enhancement lists and would also be a better representation of the PnP domain system.

I'm a fan of clerics as a defensively focused divine class. That differentiates them from other similar classes and I think that is important. On that same note, going too far defending others and healing others give them little else to do and they should have some strong offensive options to use at least occasionally to offset a lot of defending and healing.


2) Fighters trees seem a bit complicated.

Kensai was interesting with some more dodge abilities and adding meditation / weapon stacking. I found stalwart more interesting because I like seeing more damaging abilities added in. That is something previously missing. I'll be playing around more with both to get a better feel for the new system because it does seem more complex in those decisions, and nothing really stood out to grab my attention for them so I might have missed a gem in there somewhere.


3) Rangers seem to have had a lot added, and seem to be focusing more towards a DPS class, which I like, and which I think is appropriate. Some of the kensai players might state they want more improvements after comparing the ranger trees, I expect, but given the fact rangers generally have less hit points and PRR a person would expect better damage options even with the self healing available to rangers. Favored enemy is already situational, and with the FE enhancement delegated to the sniper tree adding some nice damage enhancements to tempest was the right thing to do. I also like seeing faster sneaking added to the ranger enhancements.


4) I'm confused why artificers have wand heightening at first tier, and wand & scroll at second tier, but clerics get both combined at first tier. That gives artificers a much larger cost for the same ability. That should be uniform among caster style trees.


5) A lot of races look more promising. Removing the class requirements for arcanum, for example, and adding a +1 enchantment DC give advantages to many more classes than wizards suddenly, adding poison damage to drow, spending AP instead of feats to advance dragonmarks, and things like that suddenly have some appeal. Feywild tap gives a lot of bonus temp SP and a free search makes elves more appealing to a variety of classes. If the entangle SLA they can add actually is WIS based and that's not an error they offer to even more classes.

[Aelonwy]

That's not much of a conspiracy theory. Seems pretty factually accurate to me, as best as we can tell.

Why not just make the interface mimic that of the Epic Destinies window? All unlocked enhancement trees appear in a list on the left hand side of the window, and you can highlight whichever one you want to view that tree in the main portion of the window. There would even be enough real estate this way to not be forced into 4x5 trees at the maximum, because you're only displaying one tree at a time. And on the right side of the window would be a list of all your selected enhancements, across all trees.

That would have the added benefit of making the Epic Destiny interface more intuitive to players once they reach it.

YES!

Don't reinvent the wheel. Don't give us multiple interface trees - why have racial and class trees interface differently than epic destinies? That's just going to cause confusion. Simplify.
.

I second this ^! Also would make more sense if PrE Core abilities were auto-granted by total points spent in tree same as Epic Destinies.

Last, the enhancements we have right now are a tree based system - they're just presented through a lexical interface. If you wanted to make everyone happy, you'd simply turn our lexical interface into a graphical one, buff some races, create class PREs for those that don't have 3 yet, and make sure the enhancements (and feats) all work.

This is probably asking for too much. They seem to have decided to rend our current enhancements to shreds not only breaking apart what some things previously did into their constituent pieces (in some cases discarding a few previous loved parts) but also separating them all over the level map as to when we can achieve them.

[emptysands]

We recognize that one of DDO's strengths is character diversity. We do not intend for this change to remove the viability of Multi-Classing or character diversity. I understand that the current restrictions make Multi-Classing more difficult.

How some sort of "twist" system.

At say 10/20/30/40/50 total AP spent allow any (ignore preq) one tier 1/2/3/4/5 or lower ability to be slotted/twisted from one of the three non-presented trees.

You still have to spend AP to upgrade these "slotted" abilities, but it gives multi-class builds with interest in more more three class trees the chance to bring in more options.

[IronClan]

What you should have done is start from the system you already know is working and relatively balanced (i.e., the current system on live), and then figure out how to design a better interface around it. Instead what you have done is start with a preconceived interface that you want to use, and then rearrange, rebuild, rebalance, and in many cases completely nerf the underlying functionality in order to fit it into that desired interface.

There are some cool new enhancements in the new system, to be sure. But they should have been worked into the old system under a better GUI instead of making everybody, yourselves and the players alike, all have to start over from scratch. There was and is no need for anybody to start from scratch!

^this I agree they are breaking old builds for no reason (unless they want to do that, there's no reason the old Enhancements can't fit into the trees) they need to get rid of "AP spent in tree" and use the trees as nice UI for what already exists.

If this System goes live and ANY BUILD BREAKS then they've failed simply because they let their own aesthetic and pride based ideas break current builds.

NEEDLESSLY, as putting all old enhancements in a general tree and then removing the "AP in tree" requirement would effectively keep all old builds possible.

There's absolutely no reason for any builds to break... It's also interesting that Squeek literally said "We know this will break your builds" [paraphrased] in one post but later edited "break your builds" out.

They KNOW they are breaking builds... Question is: Are they doing it on purpose? Because there's no mechanical reason they have to; given the changes mentioned above.

"AP spent in tree" must go, filler prerequisites must go, linking non PrE enhancements to PrE's as filler must go.

[Postumus]

We recognize that one of DDO's strengths is character diversity. We do not intend for this change to remove the viability of Multi-Classing or character diversity. I understand that the current restrictions make Multi-Classing more difficult. This is actually the main reason why I made this thread. I wanted to let you, the players, know that we are asking for your feedback about what adjustments would be most beneficial for you. We want you to help us find the balance where Pure Classed and Multi-Classed characters can thrive side by side.

I think the DDOCast review of the new enhancement trees addresses the main issue that I have so far: the trees are too restrictive in that they require these linear progressions down each 'branch' of the tree to get to the ability on the tier of the branch I actually want. This forces me to spend many more APs on abilities I don't want in order to get the ones I do. I understand some abilities should be linked to required abilities in a lower tier, but it feels excessive. For example in the Unyielding Sentinel destiny there are only two abilities require me to choose lower tiered abilities (Legendary Shield Mastery & Anoint Weapon).


If you relaxed the APs spent requirements within the tree, like the epic destinies, and I could get some tier 3 and higher abilities of some of the branches without having to get every single ability in that branch, that would give me more flexibility on how I want to build my character.


Even better would be allowing the APs I spent in one tree to count for the AP minimums necessary for abilities in other trees (sort of like they do now). Take Ranger for example. As a pure ranger any APs I spend in Deepwood Sniper should also count for the AP minimums for abilities in Tempest. Same with the racial tree. APs I spend in the racial tree should also count for AP minimum requirements in the ranger class trees.

[kingfisher]

^this I agree they are breaking old builds for no reason (unless they want to do that, there's no reason the old Enhancements can't fit into the trees) they need to get rid of "AP spent in tree" and use the trees as nice UI for what already exists.

If this System goes live and ANY BUILD BREAKS then they've failed simply because they let their own aesthetic and pride based ideas break current builds.

NEEDLESSLY, as putting all old enhancements in a general tree and then removing the "AP in tree" requirement would effectively keep all old builds possible.

There's absolutely no reason for any builds to break... It's also interesting that Squeek literally said "We know this will break your builds" [paraphrased] in one post but later edited "break your builds" out.

They KNOW they are breaking builds... Question is: Are they doing it on purpose? Because there's no mechanical reason they have to; given the changes mentioned above.

"AP spent in tree" must go, filler prerequisites must go, linking non PrE enhancements to PrE's as filler must go.

good point about the post being changed. they assuredly know, they have been told countless times since the enh pass first came up over a year ago. the answer imo is, yes, they are doing it on purpose. LR+/TR heart money baby, its where its at.

[Seikojin]

I can understand most players being fearful of drastic change. And I mean core level changes. ED's are a drastic change. But they don't tinker with level 1.

However, I like many, if not all of the added abilities and features the new enhancements add. I think the cost to build needs to be tweaked: The same level and kinds of builds should be creatable with the new system.

The main reason for this major overhaul is the small amount of options in each class to do something; save casters. And the popularity of ED's with new features. So it is logical that people would like a more diverse set of options for every class, not just casters.

I still think they should add bullrush and overwhelm.