Dear Feather of Sun...

[HernandoCortez]

We should have Ghostbane of Ghostbane instead. Why would you need anything else? Ghostbane is so Ghostbane you need nothing but Ghostbane.

[Gempoult]

I honestly don't understand all the excitement... Several new (very rare probably and with "proc" damage) suffixes added to weapons? So what? Still not gonna make anything even remotely close to CiTW weapons and what about accessories? Armors? All the dozen lost (cool) effects from before U19? All the retroactive changes that turned hundreds of TR items into vendor trash? Or was the last thing on purpose so people stop complain about bank space and TR? Seriously, FOS tells you that the loot system will go from .1% complete to .12% complete (soon) and everyone is "wowing" and thanking... For what? I really don't get it...

[HernandoCortez]

I honestly don't understand all the excitement... Several new (very rare probably and with "proc" damage) suffixes added to weapons? So what? Still not gonna make Anything even remotely close to CiTW weapons and what about accessories? Armors? All the dozen lost (cool) effects from before U19? All the retroactive changes that turned hundreds of TR items into trash? Or was the last thing on purpose so people stop complain about bank space and TR? Seriously, FOS tells you that the loot system will go from .1% complete to .12% complete (soon) and everyone is "wowing" and thanking... For what? I really don't get it...

I got a better one for ya: how about the "changes" they've made to the new TR system after all the "feedback" they've got from the players?
Lets see... you still need to run 100+ EHard quests to get a Heart of Wood and people are happy about it.
Turbine knows how to handle their peasants. Its easy to fool the fanbois.

[Ayseifn]

If convalescence comes back I wonder if it'll get given the dodge treatment, different tiers no longer stacking.

[Gempoult]

I got a better one for ya: how about the "changes" they've made to the new TR system after all the "feedback" they've got from the players?
Lets see... you still need to run 100+ EHard quests to get a Heart of Wood and people are happy about it.
Turbine knows how to handle their peasants. Its easy to fool the fanbois.

Oh, there is much more just about loot... I was lazy to put it all... No "clean" items with just prefix or suffix to lower ML (especially for the mid-levels), nerfed (even further) named items and so on and so on, but yeah we gonna have rare drop of incineration (with changed name), wow! So awesome, everything is cool...

[Thrudh]

Developers aren't supposed to admit to having human emotions.
We need to be uncaring, aloof bastions of mystery, holding our Vast and Mysterious plans close to our chest.

So here's another Friday Night, Still At The Office foot in mouth moment:
I've been very frustrated with the state of itemization lately.
Epic Gianthold was where I last thought we had treasure systems in a really great place. We released a massive treasure system for it, along with the revamped augment system, incorporating several elements that I think are key to encouraging enjoyment and player retention: Lots of cool treasure to find in the quests, rewards for playing on higher difficulties, items with an upgrade system, and barter vendors with rewards to save up your effort for.


Update 19 shattered that "endgame" experience. The level cap increased, yet there was almost nothing new to aspire to. We couldn't support new rewards to properly itemize character builds in the new level 25-28 range. As a result, we've moved to a point where there isn't anything in the way of continued ways to progress your character while remaining at level cap.

Epic Reincarnation in Update 20 will help with some of that, but it's not (and shouldn't) be for everyone.

This sucks. We need to fix it.


Stay tuned by mid-next week for updates.
For now, though, I'm going home. There's only so much I should poke the beehive late on a Friday night.
Have a good weekend!
-Sunbane

Well, now we agree on the problem... Here's one solution... Along with implementing your plans with Metoric and all that, I suggest, that you go through all named items and update them...

If they have deception, update to new deception... If they have protection or resistance or natural armor, or stat bonuses, up the bonuses to match or even slightly exceed like-leveled random loot. (for example, the epic Envenomed Cloak... +7 CON and +5 resistance and a green slot - That resistance needs to be bumped to +8)

A big part of end-game is going to be repeating 20-28 or 15-28... Revamp the old the 20th level epic items like I said above, so they are worth going for, AND create a way to upgrade them to 28th level epic items...

This will give people reason to run all the old epic quests to get shards/seals/scrolls again. In fact, people will probably want TWO of certain items, one to be upgraded for level 28-30, and one for "twink" gear to use from 20-27,

[Thrudh]

Epic Gianthold was where I last thought we had treasure systems in a really great place. We released a massive treasure system for it, along with the revamped augment system, incorporating several elements that I think are key to encouraging enjoyment and player retention: Lots of cool treasure to find in the quests, rewards for playing on higher difficulties, items with an upgrade system, and barter vendors with rewards to save up your effort for.

Yep, I thought loot was in a great place too just 1 update ago... Tell whoever makes the decisions that it is NOT a good idea to jump from +8 max to +11... No need for it... Invalidates old (not that old!) items for no good reason... Powergamers would have been happy to grind for new +9 named items, and the rest of us could have been happy sticking with our decent +8s for a while.

Same with +10 protection, resistance, natural armor... Made all the old named items with +5 and +6 pretty weak. Don't jump so far going forward. Fix the named items to match random gear and when you up the level cap to 30, go to +12 rare named items. The powergamers will be happy to grind for that +1.

[Raithe]

Well, now we agree on the problem...

No, I'm afraid WE (as in the MAJORITY) don't.

This will give people reason to run all the old epic quests to get shards/seals/scrolls again. In fact, people will probably want TWO of certain items, one to be upgraded for level 28-30, and one for "twink" gear to use from 20-27,

No, "people" won't want two of something they didn't want one of before. The old Epic system was a miserable failure. People just flat out didn't care, and the ones who did spent all their game time farming scrolls solo. The point of a game is to play it, not prepare to play it so that some day you might have a chance to come across as important and uber to some stranger on the internet.

There is no more certain demise of a game than when the developers and their VERY small constituency are bickering about itemization when their game has no playability. Updating loot to be even bigger and better reduces playability, and is one of the prime reasons people become disenfranchised and look elsewhere for entertainment. But hey, if it didn't work the first hundred times you tried it, it's gotta work this time...

[Thrudh]

You revived EE questing and grouping a bit with eGH, great items in revamped quests, many would run those, even for trading for other items. It was really great way to "kickstart" asah if that's what you were going for.
3 months later random lootgen makes the effort/time/shards obsolete.

This is a good way to sell it to management... I bet the ASAH suffered a bit, which means the bottom line suffered a bit.

[2pleasegimmie]

Developers aren't supposed to admit to having human emotions.
We need to be uncaring, aloof bastions of mystery, holding our Vast and Mysterious plans close to our chest.

So here's another Friday Night, Still At The Office foot in mouth moment:
I've been very frustrated with the state of itemization lately.
Epic Gianthold was where I last thought we had treasure systems in a really great place. We released a massive treasure system for it, along with the revamped augment system, incorporating several elements that I think are key to encouraging enjoyment and player retention: Lots of cool treasure to find in the quests, rewards for playing on higher difficulties, items with an upgrade system, and barter vendors with rewards to save up your effort for.


Update 19 shattered that "endgame" experience. The level cap increased, yet there was almost nothing new to aspire to. We couldn't support new rewards to properly itemize character builds in the new level 25-28 range. As a result, we've moved to a point where there isn't anything in the way of continued ways to progress your character while remaining at level cap.

Epic Reincarnation in Update 20 will help with some of that, but it's not (and shouldn't) be for everyone.

This sucks. We need to fix it.


Stay tuned by mid-next week for updates.
For now, though, I'm going home. There's only so much I should poke the beehive late on a Friday night.
Have a good weekend!
-Sunbane

You left off the issues with ego in the first part of your post there. Taking pages from the Brad McQuaid playbook is a sure way to fail.

That said, I thought the MotU loot expansion was pretty good, so taking it out was really a poor decision - no matter what you do later, and especially if you don't put that stuff back, along with adding new stuff.

Simply put; More loots/choices = GOOD Less loots/choices = BAD. Along this line, the big nerf to existing item levels really wasnt a very good idea.

Also, I really liked the Madness line of content. Good story, great voice acting, and fun loot. One of the main unique things about DDO is the DM. Don't blow that off, and dont skimp on voice acting.

And seriously - if you are going to do "ghostbane", you need to have it with a chance to appear wtih disruption.

[Thrudh]

No, I'm afraid WE (as in the MAJORITY) don't.



No, "people" won't want two of something they didn't want one of before. The old Epic system was a miserable failure. People just flat out didn't care, and the ones who did spent all their game time farming scrolls solo. The point of a game is to play it, not prepare to play it so that some day you might have a chance to come across as important and uber to some stranger on the internet.

There is no more certain demise of a game than when the developers and their VERY small constituency are bickering about itemization when their game has no playability. Updating loot to be even bigger and better reduces playability, and is one of the prime reasons people become disenfranchised and look elsewhere for entertainment. But hey, if it didn't work the first hundred times you tried it, it's gotta work this time...

So what's your solution? I don't think the old epic system was a failure at all... But if you do, what would replace it with? There's a ton of old epic content that we're all about to rerun again while epic TRing... You want to add new loot to all of it? Or revamp the system already in place?

[Noctus]

Finally a honest answer, without any spin or "Vast and Mysterious" empty phrases!

[Leclaire1]

Hey Feather,

I've always appreciated the work you've done on loot over the years, especially as I know you were largely responsble for the amazing loot overhaul of update 17. I've also appreciated your willingness to respond with honesty to various problems, such as calling the old epic augment system crappy. The changes we got in that update were long overdue and much needed, and probably no other update I know of has so fundamentally changed the loot system from 1-25 in such a positive way. Granted I'm not much of a troll (although Teh Troll is pretty awesome and funny), so it's no surpise that I largely overlooked some of the inadequacies of update 19's loot since I was relatively happy still with the larger changes before. Nonetheless, I appreciate what you've said and it makes lots of sense. Fundamentally, the decision (probably at a higher level) to not release a new raid with a new level cap was probably the source of many problems. After all, it is a bit ridiculous when lootgen stuff from epic shadowfell outlevels hard-earned, upgrade raid loot from FoT and CiTW. Only level 28 raid loot should beat this stuff, and it seems that the "easy" solution of +10 random loot items created problems with the system. Nonetheless, especially given your posts I'm confident these issues can be addressed soon, and some more interesting named items added into the mix. Also, its worth saying not all loot is in a bad place- I love my nether orb and am chomping at the bit to get a consuming darkness. So, thanks again for all your work in the past and your honesty and transparency. Also, since you're reading this, a Christmas list of things that would be especially nice to upgrade-

1) Cormyrian Red and Green Dragonscale Armors- Seriously, these are much harder to get than the GH stuff, and I still wear my red proudly. Nonetheless, a way to upgrade them to make them to be more on par with the others, perhap with commendations would be great. Adding augment slots would also be a huge help, as even Epic Velah scale has this option. I'd also recommend adding one other coveted ability to the green to increase the appeal of dragon-hunting, be it transform kinetic energy, or the new sp restore thing on the Nether Orb, or at least the temp mechanic on the halcyon boots. This would improve on the power store to make it coveted. Alternatively, you could just add some arcane lore so it isnt too behind blue

2) EE Dream Visor and like competence bonus damage items- I feel bad for those who farmed these out as they are now irrelevant. Simply converting the damage type to a new stacking bonus to damage (insight perhaps?) would immediately make it relevant again.

3) Dragontouched Armor- The system is overall quite nice, but either needs upgraded values to make them worth using on epics, or a drop in ML (perhaps to 12 or 14) to give them longer relevance in the TR process.

There's probably more stuff, but those are a few top issues I can think of. Thanks again for everything.

[cdbd3rd]

In all seriousness, I'm good at putting my foot in my mouth and bluntly saying things I shouldn't.
So here's one more:
Turning Ghostbane into a meme is, in my book, the best thing to happen to DDO in awhile.

...

<<snippage>>.

Voted Best Dev Post in Ages.

[cdbd3rd]

This is an awesome response Feather! This is the type of communication that is needed on a more regular basis from the dev team. 5-10 minutes, once a week.

Awesome idea! And they could call it... oh, something like Weekly Developer Activities or something...

*smirks*

[Cetus]

The original plan for random treasure is what you see in game now, plus the following:

Items would rarely, in addition to the normal damage-dealing prefix they have, generate with a different prefix name and an additional special effect.
These would include some of the following:

• Meteoric
• Tempestous
• Infernal
• Glacial
• Erosive
• (and more!)

They're related to the damage type on the weapon. So a weapon with Flaming could sometimes instead appear as either Meteoric or Infernal.
Either a Shock or Screaming weapon could be Tempestous. There's enough rare prefixes to cover all of the prefixes that can appear on weapons.

The new versions of these effects are "procs", an effect that has a chance to occur on attack. They do things like, in the example of Meteoric, make a meteor fly in from the sky and smash into your enemies for AoE damage, dealing damage dice based on the level of your weapon, and forcing affected enemies to make a Reflex save of DC 20+Item Level or be knocked down.

There's also a lot of additional prefixes and suffixes for weapons, armor, and accessories that haven't been put into the treasure system.
Some of these include Humanoid Bane (combination of Elf, Dwarf, Human, Halfling and so on...), a new version of Bodyfeeder that deals a negative level to your target in addition to giving you temporary hit points, and adding some more staple effects like Blurry into accessories.
Many of the MotU multi-affix mutations have updated versions so they would be able to appear throughout more levels of gameplay.

DC 20...if this shows up on an EE item then...

I don't know, I guess nothing new as far as feedback will be concerned.

No save, or DC 70, otherwise - whatever.

[redspecter23]

DC 20...if this shows up on an EE item then...

I don't know, I guess nothing new as far as feedback will be concerned.

No save, or DC 70, otherwise - whatever.

To be fair, it's 20 + Item level so up to DC 50 at level 30. For EH quests that seems reasonable, but for EE it's a joke. It's not really the item scaling that's the issue here, but the fact that the DC needed to be effective in EE is often more than 20 points higher than what works in EH. This is a problem with the massive divide between EH and EE and not the item itself. EE is ramped up to 50 on a scale of 1 to 10. Unfortunately, EH is a 3 and we don't have access to any difficulties in between.

[Cyr]

To be fair, it's 20 + Item level so up to DC 50 at level 30. For EH quests that seems reasonable, but for EE it's a joke. It's not really the item scaling that's the issue here, but the fact that the DC needed to be effective in EE is often more than 20 points higher than what works in EH. This is a problem with the massive divide between EH and EE and not the item itself. EE is ramped up to 50 on a scale of 1 to 10. Unfortunately, EH is a 3 and we don't have access to any difficulties in between.

Having mods which do less dps for more difficult content is a sure way to make those mods not valued. That was always the problem with DC based damage mods. You either pump the DC to a huge level and make it basically a 95% proc rate or you have a junk mod. Either way it makes more sense to drop the DC nonsense on weapon.

[Hendrik]

In all seriousness, I'm good at putting my foot in my mouth and bluntly saying things I shouldn't.
So here's one more:
Turning Ghostbane into a meme is, in my book, the best thing to happen to DDO in awhile.

It's gotten attention to this issue.
Previously, the rest of the treasure work was a cut feature. It's been gathering dust on my hard disk.
It has not been worked on recently.

During Shadowfell Conspiracy's development cycle, high-level decisions were made about priorities, and they had decided that the enhancement system needed a lot of work poured into it. The rest of the treasure work was cut, and I was moved on to enhancements.

In all fairness, the enhancement system revamp sorely needed it.

Here's where we let you all down:
After Update 19 was out the door and things started cooling off, we failed to adequately determine what our next priorities should be, and divert the right resources back on to those issues.

Now that everything's been ghostbaned, indications are that we might be able to get a treasure system update out for the first major patch after Update 20.

I'm not sure what, if any of my original plan it will contain. That won't be my call to make.
Once I'm given something concrete to work on though, I'll let the community know as soon as possible.

Thank you FoS for your honest reply to these concerns!

And with a great deal of respect, thank you!

[Dandonk]

After reading Feather's posts in here I'm cautiously optimistic. I'll defer final judgment until I actually see what will be implemented. But thank you, FoS, for actually posting here and engaging in conversation with the playerbase.