Help us Producer Rowan; You're our only hope.

[Meat-Head]

Dear Sir,


As you know, DDO has had ups and downs. It's currently experiencing something of a down. The game is aging. Logins to DDO.com is down a lot according to independant tracking websites (down from the time BEFORE U14. There was a spike for the expansion). Currently, servers are averaging some 500 people online during weekdays and maybe 50% more on weekends. Of course, Wayfinder is far less as an outlier (protest notwithstanding). But, we all know that.

I'll get to the point: I'm asking you to listen. Listen to your players. You have some very very sophisticated and intelligent players. With all due respect, many of your players are far more intelligent than many of your developers. (btw, I'm not even one of the smart ones. See avatar name) With this in mind, it's critical that you listen. We want this game to succeed. We want it to be great. We want that 500-750 login number to increase a lot.


The following was posted by an intelligent player on this forum somewhere. It was then read my other intelligent players who recognized it as intelligent and who support it. I could make my own list. But this is a good one. I'd rather you listen to fewer GOOD messages than many mediocre ones. Please read it. Please listen.

Help us Producer Rowan; you're our only hope.

There are many great ideas on these forums to improve DDO. However that is not really the main goal of Turbine, it is a business after all so lets talk profits.

There are pushy ways to do business which may compel customers to make purchases but leave a negative impact on them. DDO is heading in that direction. It is really unnecessary as you have here a wonderful system already in place which could practically sell itself and become a much more popular game. Would you rather not have players spending money in excitement for what they are getting then bitterness for what they have to get?

There are many features we have been begging to buy. Monster Manuals, more cosmetics, more storage, reagent bags, races, classes, housing, sex change, quests, RAIDS. These are just a few off the top of my head. If you would sell us what we want you wouldn't have to trick us into buying what we don't.

DDO is one of the most unique and complex games I have played. The character creation system alone is the main draw for many people. Sadly most gamers have never heard of this game. Why do you not (modestly) advertise? Something simple and cheap, marketing yourself as the complex mmo or the most customizable or unique or action based combat. Any of these marketing points would be a big draw for people looking for such a game. Flaunt the strengths DDO has. There is a real niche market there for this type of game and DDO is the only place to find it.

Stimulate the sales of adventure packs;

While Shadowfell Conspiracy is very beautiful with great artwork and voice acting it is sadly not enough.
Most People buy packs for 2 reasons, loot and xp. Both of witch cost you NOTHING to increase. Why don't you?

What makes Adventure packs desirable;

XP and Loot

There is little to say about xp other than it should be increased if you want to make your adventure packs more enticing. If the new packs had something like von3 you would find Eveningstar much less of a ghost town.

Loot and how it affects the sales of adventure packs;

You have utterly destroyed the once brilliant and esteemed random loot system for no apparent reason. Not only is getting the same 4 suffixes a giant step backwards from what we knew and loved, the auction house is flooded with cheap random items that outclass most of the highest level named items. There goes any incentive to buy adventures for loot. Poor XP and meager loot have successfully rendered your new shiny expansion insignificant and undesirable regardless of it's quality.

Revert random loot to how it used to be when MOTU launched. It was perfect. We had a plethora of unique and exciting effects, we had composed weapon affixes, we had clickies. It was fun, but now loot is boring and therefor the game is boring. Everything we loot now is the same; retributive, doublestrike, ghostbane, deadly or accuracy. We have yet to hear any dev comment as to why you would butcher such a core aspect of this game. Revert random loot and scale it to be slightly less powerful then named loot of the same level. You will once again incentivise people to buy adventures for the sexy named loot. That is one of the biggest draws to mmos, I cannot stress that enough. People love named loot in these games.

Regarding the old packs, they were once the endgame epics. People would stay at 20, raid and farm for epic ingredients and all was wonderful. With the increase in level cap, 20 is nothing more than a pit stop. Those once sought after epic named items are nothing more then level 20 suboptimal named loot. Why do we still need to spend a year grinding for these ingredients when we are getting better random loot, regardless of how boring it is? If the old epic items dropped completed (like every other named item) it would add some value to these old packs. Another thing that made those packs attractive is the ability to work towards your reincarnation which is also being removed, further decreasing their value.

Reincarnation

A very tricky feature to quantify. On one hand its current popularity is mainly due to the lack of an endgame, on the other it is ingenious, innovative and unique to DDO. Actually one of the most brilliant features in the genre.

Hearts of wood however remind me of sigils. They were removed because they were a roadblock to player retention. They created a false obstacle in front of players limiting the amount of time they could spend in the game. Hearts are now serving this purpose.

Since the current loot mess has rendered raids quite pointless and the high level quests offering very little, there is nothing else to do at endgame currently which is only exacerbating the importance of reincarnating.
Anything done to make the reincarnation process more difficult is going to limit the amount of time players remain customers.

Instead you have chosen to monetize this feature with a very unpopular saga system. A system designed to sell not only hearts but adventure packs in a very underhanded manner. The community knows this, and the disdain is going to drive even more away. If the above insights about adventure packs were implemented The sales of all adventures would rise and there would be no cause to create such an unpopular system, the players would not hold resentment but respect and elation.

[Bimbelbo]

Help us, Obi-Wan!

[Arianka]

The following was posted by an intelligent player on this forum somewhere. It was then read my other intelligent players who recognized it as intelligent and who support it. I could make my own list. But this is a good one. I'd rather you listen to fewer GOOD messages than many mediocre ones. Please read it. Please listen.

The orignal is here:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...93#post5143293

[Meat-Head]

The orignal is here:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...93#post5143293

Thank you.

[Vellrad]

If Rowan is our *only* hope, we're doomed.