An introduction: you can call me Doctor Loot

[Scraap]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

This? Right here? This gets you points.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

The two largest issues with RNG loot that immediately spring to mind are:
1) On average, they out-class non-random loot that is easier to acquire. Be that (in order of ease of acquisition): MoTU fully-formed drop loot, non-guaranteed-drop named loot, crafted loot, non-epic raid loot, non-epic raid-crafted loot, epic raid-crafted loot.
2) An overfocus on effects with a high bias towards an average. Deadly is one example, but a high number of d6s that just bleed into an almost guaranteed bonus per-hit is another. Your average gamer is almost always going to gravitate towards maximizing their control over a situation. The problem is, with the lions share of content lacking randomized mobs or dungeons, too much control just ends up turning it into a repetitive slog once that is accomplished. It doesn't *have* to be a loot-only fix, but frankly, the latest loot changes have all but broken replay value in that regard, and the dungeons of late aside from the absolute latest haven't really given much hope for that changing that end any time soon. (Philosophically speaking, On-the-Dice doesn't just apply to saves and DCs. It's one of the reasons quite a few folks refer to the pre-epic game as DnDish and the post-epic game as not.)

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

1) weapons:
a) Low rate of attack weapons are likely the worst offenders.
b) Low crit profile weapons a close second. (crit profile being range* multiplier)

2) armors:
a) The defensive end is largely down to the deltas between robes and heavy armor. Conceptually, there's a sliding scale for how much magic vs how much physical damage is mitigated. In practice, there's simply not enough bonus on the physical mitigation end to make giving up the magical defensive end worth it.
b) ties in to point a tangentially: using the same linear progression for probabilities for defensive procs as offensive procs makes the erroneous assumption that we're sitting there trading blows with things that have comparable hitpoints and damage as we do. We aren't. Ever. It's either a case of being offensively overgeared to the point of cutting through their defenses before a proc goes off, or them hitting hard enough those 2%s are unlikely to trigger before we're down and out in just about every encounter.

3) saves: we went from superior stability compressing the difference between an alignment-locked class with saves boosts and one without, even if only by a little, to almost double that for any alignment. Pretty much the opposite of what was needed to keep things on the dice there.

4) tactics vs DC augmentation: you've got two systems.
a) specific tactics stack with general tactics bonuses.
b) specific schools do not stack with general schools bonuses.
Pick One. (I'd personally prefer B to knock creep down a peg, but at this point, I'll take either just to get some consistency.)

5) debilitation:
a) stat debilitation is Mostly Not a Loot Problem, unless you want to bend casters over more by maintaining epic stat damage ward and going the usual 'just jack up the numbers' route to account for that -90% resistance, but the main thing there is absolutely needing to overcome a given stat vs the capacity to bring it down some really has made for a smaller game. For all characters.
b) non-damaging affixes such as knock-down, paralyzing, stunning (the chance to proc version), old vorpal (in it's many forms), nightmare, level draining ect serve as tools to bump up the utility of non-dps weapons and guard itemization without eclipsing the role of dps or pure defensive ones. I can't really say there's ever been a point where they've served that purpose well outside of when they have been confined to named weapons/armor alone, but biasing those toward otherwise poor loot when the RNG is generating them might serve to slow the bleeding there a little bit.

[LordDunmore]

I know this is a bit more specific than what you are looking for, but ....

How about revisiting again the drop rate of some of the 'very rare' raid items. The one that I sorely wish for is Yellow Dopant in the Shroud.

On all my toons, I would imagine I have run well over 100 shroud runs, the majority on Hard, a few norm and elite. Since dopant was introduced I have seen it drop ONCE in over 100 runs. On Hard/Elite, that is a minimum of 3 chests it could appear in. That's 12 people * 3 Chests per run, * 100. Which comes to a conservative 1:3600 chance of a drop? (or if you want to add that there can be more than one shroud ingredient in each chest, and the number is even drastically poorer... 1:10,000 or more?) Factor in loot boost weekends, jewels of fortune, etc. and its even more disappointing.

Of course there is the 20th reward list, but you are now choosing between cleansing stone and dopant.

Thanks for the thread. It's appreciated.

[Scrapco]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

Aside from that? Nothing, I guess.
You can probably look it up somehow, but I'm infinitely curious about end rewards, if you track that. Was there an impact on the number of people taking guild renown instead of gear after the switch? I very rarely take loot anymore, just because I go down the list saying "garbage, garbage, garbage..." Once in a while I'll grab something with a slot and craft that to go on the AH.

Kind of off-tangent, but the *way* reward lists are decided could use a tweak or two. If you're playing a dark monk, say, it would be great to have shortswords drop regularly. Decent non-magic quarterstaffs might be fun if you have Henshin ranks. Instead, it's always the same old garbage handwraps.


- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

Wraps, but that's my monk bias speaking. The part I *do* like about the randomness is that we're getting different effects in different places now, e.g. something other than Clever +x Goggles of Irrelevancy, which was pointless for half the classes.


- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your characters are currently wearing.

Level 12 monk, and apart from a crafted thorn guard robe of invulnerability, nothing. I'd be surprised if you find many people on their second+ life who have much random gear above level 5 or so, and of that, it's probably almost all "old" (like invuln, convalescent/parrying, lacerating, and so on). The only thing I'll probably add somewhere is Deadly. Sometime I swap in a fire resist item or whatever, but that's only because I get tired of popping pots and I don't have uber ship buffs.

+1 vote to update Cannith crafting, as well. There are a (steadily dwindling, it seems) few of us who have a) invested a fair amount of time into it; but b) also enjoy it. I like when a friend asks me if I can build some crazy boots, or a greatsword of mad hackery. The issue is after the first few levels, you can't really make anything great except for a few specialized items.


+10 votes for asking the questions in the first place though! The communication lately has been great, and we all hope it continues.

[HGM-Chi]

Stop with the roman numeral junk.

greater convalescent bracers of superior parrying (i refuse to call them parrying VIIIVXWIIMLX or whatever stupid roman numeral junk got added).

I find it funny they've gone to this system after having decided the player base couldn't possibly understand how 2d6 or 3d8 works.

[knightgf]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

• There are several issues. First, spell components are only in a stack of 10; why not 100 or more? Second, it can be difficult to get a random gen item you desire even when "Show end rewards based on class" is checked. For example, a pale master wizard is likely to end up with weapons more suitable for a barbarian than themselves. And finally, there are not enough 'cursed' variables thrown around; curses that are dependent on a condition (I.E.: Make a check every X minutes or have Y effect for Z seconds.), are unreliable (% chance every X minutes that item will not function for Y seconds), reduce maximum HP/SP/KI, exc. could be introduced. In addition, they really should not show up at epic levels, except perhaps for named items.
• In random loot? Trinkets. In named loot? Medium armor, rapiers, shuriken, throwing weapons, light hammers (Which might as well be taken out of the game), tower shields, light/heavy maces, morningstars, kukri, greatclubs, mauls, warhammers, dwarven axes and great crossbows tend to be some of the more underserved loot.
• If I wear non-named loot, its usually to accompany something named loot does not have.

As a bonus answer, here are some loot properties you could offer either on named and/or random loot:

• (Metamagic name here): (Metamagic name here) costs no additional SP to use, and is automatically applied to all spells capable of using it. This effect lasts for 20 seconds.
• Greater (Metamagic name here): (Metamagic name here) costs no additional SP to use, is automatically applied to all spells capable of using it, and subtracts the number of spell points used that spell would have otherwise used with the metamagic, but never below 0 spell points. This effect lasts for 20 seconds.
• Lesser respite: Your action boosts, turn undead, remove disease, lay on hands, rage, and leap of faith uses regenerate at a rate of 1 every three minutes.
• Respite: Your action boosts, turn undead, remove disease, lay on hands, rage, and leap of faith regenerate at a rate of 1 every two minutes.
• Greater respite: Your action boosts, turn undead, remove disease, lay on hands, rage, and leap of faith regenerate at a rate of 1 every two minutes, and the number of times you can use them increases by two.

[patang01]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

First, look at what MOTU did right (and the releases up till the xpack.

Lots of new and interesting permutations across many different items. Restrictions were loosened and what were unique to named items added to random loot. Like heal amp. Spell power on rings and helmets. Much stronger random staffs etc. And ontop of that 'special' random loot that had special properties like Meteoric. In other words - what you could find on unique named items were now possible to pull on a random.

Then augments were added. Awesome - now even random items could add that diversity. This was expanded in the latest xpack along with the side effect of removing all interesting permutations.

In short order. The latest xpack did 2 good thing and everything else wrong.

First - it removed the BTC feature in a big way. So most items are unbound and not automatically bound because they seem stronger. Only the very top one random items with blue border binds. It's unfortunate since even if they are 'stronger' they're not always better and we players don't need more garbage in our banks. But over all most items are now unbound while named have the same BTC on equip.

Second - it expanded augments. Now you can find more blue, more red and more multi colored including 2 augments on items. That's good. It adds diversity. Like with my scepter with glaciation and acid lore and a red augment so I can add more acid spell power too it. That adds diversity. And since it's unbound I can either sell it or put it on a mule. Good.

The bad are of course the obliteration of all the good permutations from MOTU and forward with the addition of fewer to items. Ontop of they overboard power on random stuff to the point they've destroyed the value of some of the better named. Like deadly of accuracy items. It's 'good' but at the same time it made all other similar named items worthless over night. Especially since you can pull stronger random deadly items at lower level then what used to be a really desired item - the dreamvisor.

So how can this be Fixed. Increase permutations. To MOTU and forward levels. Heal amp, repair amp, spell power on items again (and not just scepters) with the odd lore item other then scepters.

Same with armor and shields. Diversify. Make them desired. Make them interesting. Also, revise the named items that got screwed. Make their bonuses stack, rather then take a meat cleaver to the problem.
Like with the dreamvisor - make it a stacking bonus different from the deadly of accuracy. Something like a sacred bonus, or even psionic. You can make it smaller to scale better - like the heroic gets a bonus that doesn't stack as well with deadly compared to other similar items where as the Epic versions get more unique.

Add more augments. Diverse augments. And have them drop slightly more often. No need to saturate the market with them, Just make enough of them to make exploring chests fun again. Augments represent the ultimate diversity item. It allows unique combinations.

Also, figure how to make something up-gradable. From normal to elite. We see a glut of stuff on the market now, make higher version more unique but with the posibility to upgrade them to elite. The name of the game here is time sink. If I spend more time in the system upgrading items then someone else do pulling EE items, I assume it's a win win for everyone. More importantly - we need a new 'greensteel' system. One were we spend real amount of time making the items we like.

Finally

Add a way to make greater tokens, heroic comms or for them to drop more. My suggestion while you guys ramp up and get the end game going is to add comms to all Epic raids. A chance in everything but Citw and fot and in citw and fot automatic like it is in fot now.

That would make people run these raids more - and making it possible once more to earn greater tokens since right now few run old epic raids making it impossible to get greater tokens. And with this redo the old epic system. Make it possible to create a missing piece of the 3 stuff needed to make an item epic by using say valor. Like if you have the shard and the scroll you simply use valor as a substitute for the missing seal.

The reason is simple; the old epic was far more arbitrary then what we have now but those items are good right now when we ETR. And I can't tell you how infernally frustrating it is to try to pull say the shard of the doublecross bow when I get every single other pieces after hundreds of runs. It's soul hurtin'.

[PsychoBlonde]

I'd like to see benefits like stunning, shattering, deception, and parrying on non-weapon items. I haven't been able to tell, but the new dc-boosting weapons don't seem to be working: the DC on my ability doesn't change and it fires as often as it does without my dc-boosting weapons. This is a major problem.

[RedOrm]

Just chiming in to agree with almost everything said so far:

Random loot should NOT be better than named loot. It should be weaker.
Named loot should NOT have random effects.
Bring BACK all the cool pre- and suffixes.
Make the power of an item VISIBLE in the name.
Cannith crafting/greensteel etc needs to be UPDATED all the way up to level 30. (YES please!! to an epic shroud I LOVE that quest)/
The old epic items should get an update, OR be far easier to get, either by substantially increasing the droprate for shards and seals, or by making them unbound, or at least able to turn in 3 for 1 seal.shard of your choice.
FIX the droprate for tomes, or at least explain to us how it works.
And so on.

A few things I haven't seen yet:
Please STOP making everything non-random BTC! I hate it when my wizard pulls an item that would be extremely cool for my tank but can't do anything with it except vendor it.
Likewise, remove this property from augments: I Hate how slotting an augment in an unbound item makes the item BTC. Apart from specicific rare named loot like ESOS, BTC is BAD.
I also feel many augments are too high ML for what they grant.
I would love to see more named loot that *doesn't* outright improve my dps. Storage stuff like component pouches, scrollcases, potion belts, and bigger quivers, funky stuff like the Horn of Plenty (could be a clicky that produces random tevern fare, or non-random based on level, or whatever)

Underserved gear would be halfplate, many light X weapons (light pick, light xbow), named docents, companion collars (do these even still drop? It's been AGES since I last saw one).

Non-named stuff: statboosters on all toons, from crafted +2 to lootgen +10 int/+10 resist goggles. Casting sticks (glaciation of icelore and such; I have Twilight thanks to the raiders box, but it went straigt from the box to the bank for if and when I find a use for it), armour, shields... tons of stuff really.

And finally a question from me: if you're the new Loot Master, what happened to Feather_of_Sun? His open, candid, *informative* posts of last weekend gave me great hopes, but altough the thread was labeled Weekly, there's been not a peep from him since, and now there suddenly is a new loot dev??

Greetz,
Red Orm

[lugoman]

Really need a high dps named Dwarven Axe.

Not sure if it is possible, but augment crystals that increase weapon proc rates (like lighting, disintegrate), increase weapon effects like smite and banish (so they go off on 19 and 20) or decrease cool downs (like intim).

[Backley]

Too many crafting systems has made it so that every system is incomplete and mostly ignored.

Start rolling all the systems together.

* Cannith crafting shards should all be usable in augment slots and augment crystals should all be usable in Cannith crafting machines (but if you Cannith-craft your Diamond of Vitality onto an item it cannot be recovered via a Jeweler's Toolkit, hence the continued worth of augment slots).
* Reaver's Refuge Dragontouched armor should be converted to a hybrid of Cannith and Augment crafting (like a blank DT Shroud is craftable +7 with a blue slot and a clear slot) and the Eldritch/Tempest/Sovereign Runes should all be converted to Cannith and Augment gems. Maybe a pile of Draconic Runes can add another augment slot or something. And make the Draconic Runes go in bags all ready!
* Fold Greensteel in there too, just like DT above.
* All random-gen effects should be craftable via Cannith crafting. Maybe some of them require an essence created from the random gen effect itself (so to make Paralyzing you need to crunch a Paralyzing weapon, as was originally demo'd.)
* Most named-only effects should be craftable via Cannith crafting too: if you want to crunch-up your Staff of the Seer for an Essence of UMD +5 or Essence of INT to Attack/Damage, go for it.

Choices, give us choices.

[oradafu]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

I haven't had a chance to read what others have written, so I might add some more stuff later. However, I can name a few petty peeves with loot right off the top of my head.

When it comes to random loot, quarterstaves need to have an easier time gaining metallic properties and more durablity. Darkwood helps some with the durability issue, but the few ways of getting a metallic property quarterstaff negates the Darkwood option for the most part. Sources of metallic quarterstaves are the DDOStore, the end chain reward of Deleras and Threnal, and the Red Augment slot. The Red Augment slot would be fine if the Quarterstaff didn't suffer from being a weak weapon (1d6/x2) and poor durability. I think an easy way to improve the random quarterstaff would be to include both the Darkwood property and two Red Slots, so Silver/Cold Iron/Adamantine/Flametouched Iron could be slotted in one slot while the second slot could be used to increase the DPS of the weapon.

When it comes to named items, the unique Docents are severely lacking. Since the IQ, there's been less than 5 unique Docents made and none of them have been overly great. That's not really saying much, since Armors in the game (especially in the Epics) are outright horrible. There's a reason why most players are running around with the same type of armors, there needs to be more work on the named armors. But the Docents really have the short end of the stick in good armors. For years players have pointed out for example the lack of Rogue and Monk Docents, such as the Frozen Tunic, Snakeskin Vest, Icy Raiment. There's soon going to be a total of 10 Epic levels and not a single great unique general-use Docent, much less specialize Docents for particular classes. All of this should have been fixed back in Update 11 with the release of House C, yet WF players are still waiting for a decent item to be released.

As for non-named loot my characters have, maybe Deadly. Weapon-wise, it's probably Smiting (and maybe Banishing) since there's so few named Smiting weapons for my characters.

I'll throw more more thing out there for you. I'd like to see some ranged weapons get an AoE effect. Whether its a thrown weapon, bow or ammo, it'd be nice for characters that aren't casters or Artis being able to take out several barrels at a distance, instead of having to walk up to each one and hit them to get the ransack bonus.

[NytCrawlr]

1) I'd very much like to see Cannith crafting get new recipes.

This, but I know there is a plan to have something come down the pipe, at some point...

2) I'd like to see the old scroll/seal/shard Epic items get some love. It takes a VERY long time to get those items and they're just mid-game "passing through" loot now. I do think that having a significant investment in getting end game items is fine, but for items that you're just going to wear for a few levels, I think it's reasonable to just have the item itself drop directly OR add a seal exchange and shard exchange just like the Scroll exchange that we have now.

All of this, they are going to become the new twink items for some ER characters, and I think it is old enough loot that we need to have some turns ins, or maybe just start having shard/seal/scrolls show up in end rewards (a chance), and then the whole list on third runs (still a decent grind if there are multiple items in a quest that you want). This would especially help with the Sands items.

More to follow.

[Scraap]

Actually, one other 'random' (ish) underserved item that's such a joke in practice that it completely slipped my mind to even consider in the initial post: offensive wands. No way to put it but bluntly, so: The eternals are meh, the charged ones we pull are laughable, and staves which were altered to use our casting stats (not that that really helps, say, a rogue) are pretty much non-existent.

[Trasak]

I have not taken the time to read the other pages so please ignore or +1 any of the repeated statements if you are keeping track.

For many people loot is all about slot consolidation and getting all of your bases covered in order to slot in those few unique named items.

To do that we look for items with good pre-fixes su-fixes in good combinations that fill the gaps in our current gear.
Secondly we look for unique effects that are only found on lower power items such as healing amp preferably once again with a second effect that is also desirable.

Everything else that isn't in one of those two groups is vendor/deconstruct trash. I would be very surprised if even 5% of the pre U19 items were even worth putting on the auction house at their vendor price and the post U19 gear is even worse off.

This glut of bad gear is mostly due to a truly or nearly truly random item generation. Good e-fixes are combined with bad, odd combinations of power levels are found on the same item ie Deadly +6 and say +1 ref save raising the ML for no real gain, and off element caster items.

It would help maters alot if items were generated with respect to previously generated features on the item.

The tree I am thinking of would be something along the following:

1)Item type: Melee Weapon, Caster Weapon, Armor, Clothing
2)Specific item: ie Great Sword, Orb, Breastplate, Trinket
3)Specific item properties: Normal, Special material (including non metal medium and heavy armor)
4)Augment slots: none, colorless, yellow, blue, red, green, orange, purple or a combination.
5)Item Quality: Weak(cursed), normal, powerful(master craft), single rare, double rare

Now it gets challenging.

Any item that has one close to max ability with a low level one should be considered weak due to the ML tax of the weak ability.
Normal items should be either one enchant only at a high level or a balanced pair
Powerful items should be a balanced pair at nearly the single enchant level.
Single rare would have one rare e-fix and one normal
Double rare would have two rare e-fixs

Now onto building the item
Weak items could follow the current true random item generation code.
Normal singles would be easy as they are just a single effect pushed to the maximum for that item level
Normal balanced is where the logic begins. Randomly pick prefix or sufix to be the first picked then based on the effect limit the list of second options to favoring like attribute effects. This would be like combining caster stats with spellpoints, deadly and accuracy, protection and fortification, stats(enhancement exceptional or insight) with skills they modify, and importantly in my opinion spell crit and spell power to the same school.

The normals should represent good gear you can replace a lower level version you are currently wearing as you level, in pen and paper you would just pay a wizard to upgrade your current item when you had the gold.

Rares are where the grinding and hunting for unique and effectively named item level of power randoms, a perfect combination pre u19 caster staff is what single rares should be.

Rare effects need to represent multiple slot combination and unique twists. Weapons it sounds like are already on the right track with a strong base damage effect plus low chance procs. I would suggest adding things like wounding to deception items and a chance for all combat effects on a combat mastery rare.
Items need their own rares too. Healing amp should be back on the normal table but a multiple effect rare of healing amp, heal skill and alchemical healing spell power would be a good effect. Prismatic resistance at full normal strength of all 5 types, note not max power, both aligned and opposition spell power weapons so fire and ice or fire and lightning with both lores. I would also ask for turning Con-op from greensteel into an enchant effect that can only apply once per character and show up on the rare table, poor druids are shut out due to steel belts.

Double rares are the crem dela crem. Either one of the rare effects at full powerful effect or two of the rare e-fixs on the same item and maybe something else one an even more unique tier +10 all stats or something.

Everything above normal should be btcoe at least and double rares should be btcoa?


TLDR: Select set of good combos at each min level for normal gear and Op stuff you ninja loot and quit your guild to keep as rare

TLDRTLDR: Cannith Crafting of Augment gems, free the non producing cash cow.

[MeliCat]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

1) Problems with random loot other than diverstiy.
It just seems weak. It doesn't feel like things like riposte does very much. I hit things with ghostbane handwraps in the harbour at level 4 and I get yellow numbers. Same with the ghostly skeles in deleras (which need good DR). I don't like the names either. The names seem very mechancial and jolt me out of this fantasy world. I'm sad about that. I like that it's not bind on equip any more so I can move favourites around to other characters. I don't like how the minimum levels have changed so that a +2 con item is now minimum level 3. And I think it is very rude of Turbine to accuse me of exploiting with the burden of guilt debuff when you were the ones to change the minmum level. I like how slots of different colours are now appearing on my loot in different locations. I like how different stats are appearing in more locations. I don't like how mimum levels change. I think it's confusing when I slot something or when I craft something. I really wish the whole minmum level thing was easier to understand. (I am not saying I don't understand it. I am saying I wish it was easier to understand).

2) "weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot"

I'm sorry but I don't understand this question. Can you please rephrase it so I may understand you better? If I am to guess what you mean, if you mean "under served" meaning, "do not have enough of" then I would answer as follows:
- healing amp
- clickies like shield, expeditious, prot evil (that actually works - still broken) - side note: removing clickie from cloak of ice was kind of sad.
- good dps on weapons - i miss the tripple/quadruple effects.
- red slots on non weapons or some sort of amp for healing spells etc. spellcraft is something I guess.
- more DR breaking on weapons combinations either metal type or more good/holy
- good being tied to UMD need on i think still just named loot - not sure but has this been fixed on random?


3) My characters typically wear certain non named loot at certain levels:

Level 0-3 whatever - surviving on bulls str pots, bears pots, large guild slot health item, shield clickie, expeditious retreat clickie, invisibility clickies + pots, dualboxed monk. as there are no clickies in the game now and prefixes like "lacerating" have gone, there is no random gen loot that seems particularly helpful except maybe weapons with different damage types - due to the low levels I would be looking for the maximum single type. But basically surviving on Korthos gear.

Levels 4/5 - 8 random loot gen weapons or crafted ones if i can't find anything decent like holy of bleed. looking for damage reduction armors or bracers. still using expeditious retreat clickies as faster than any striding avaliable (quicksilver cassock has 20% at level 8). + to saves and deadly (great new effect - thank you) and stat items. not interested in things that don't add to damage or DR bypassing being on a weapon - I consider that a waste when I can find a prefix/suffix there that does add to damage there. experimenting with guard effects still as I really like the proc off the Frozen Tunic but I don't think it's the same so have ignored for the most part. bodyfeeder and invunerability are nice on armor. Still using clickies particularly for shield.

9-20 mainly high dps weapons, stat items, + life, damage mitigation, clickies. on casters the new random loot gen is nice for sticks. doesn't help me for meleeing casters (eg clonk but i guess eldritch knight same deal).

[losian2]

One thing that drives me crazy, personally, is the sheer "balance" of it. Breaking items into tiers and such really helps organize it, but it also makes it boring as all heck.

Considering how things stack in DDO, for example, I'll NEVER EVER want a +stat or +bonus of most any sort that's mixed with something else that lessens it.. The stuff with multiple things, i.e. low accuracy and low spellpoints, is just junk. Someone would rather take a full bonus to accuracy *and* a full bonus to spellpoints, and due to how painfully obvious the stepping is on enhancements, it really just *feels* bland.

I really get the design basis, organizing things into groups of five and ten and working in tiers and for every X pluses you get Y bonus up to A amount from Z list. It makes sense, but it's beyond boring as a player. Loot boosts are also beyond worthless in the present state - all I do is get junk I can't use for a while, rather than stuff that's arguably better.

We need some kind of rare prefixes/suffixes, something that's exciting to see. As it is you'd just steadily upgrade each I to II, II to III, III to IV, ad nauseum, and that's dull. I'd rather see a lot of these absurdly good bonuses disappear and be replaced with stuff that requires some thought and planning as for what goes where, what you take, and more importantly, what you give up. Choices aren't interesting if there's hardly a choice to be made. +10 dmg and +10 to-hit, or anything else.. well golly those are gonna trump every thing, in spades. I feel like there was a bit of an oversight in the loot shift with trying so hard to 'balance.' Keep in mind that balance isn't always a holy grail of making games more fun or better, there's a definite reason to want balance and trying to pursue it, but things which are too balanced, especially when you can glance at them and just *see* the arbitrary mechanics that bind them, become dull very fast. When no items stand out as unusual or special, no named loot have those unusually remarkable stats or odd slots or whatnot, it's just boring. We want a semblance of balance, for sure, and an item with X suffix that *nobody* ever uses could always use a nudge to have some usefulness, even just for some obscure quests/builds/etc. But really I've only just started playing agian and I was kinda floored at some of the loot I'm getting at like level 8 and 9.. +4 and 5 to-hit, damage, stat boosts.. Definitely blowing most named gear well out of the water.

Given the situation, I'd say I liked the old loot better - the random rare effects that had weird things and combined strangely.. They were definitely more interesting, though arguably nobody used "regular" prefix/suffixed items, so that's sorta the catch 22 there. Personally, either named items need to be pushed up nicely, or everyone else needs to be shifted around to accomodate, because a lot of the special items are really utterly lack luster, and it's disappointing when rather than wielding Grasshag the Western Axe of the Slayer of the Dark Deep or something similarly epic, you just whip on the next +5 Choppy Axe of the Choppy Chops that fell out of a barrel at random. don't get me wrong, good random loot is great, but named loot should always stand out.. not even necessarily always as better, but unique if nothing else.

Since coming back to DDO again I had a feeling something was wonky with the loot, and it definitely feels a lot more .. plain, is the best word. I don't find myself really wanting or looking forwards to many, or even really any, drops. None are really any more special, just the next slightly higher level version, and that linearly and obviously 'balanced' approach is what lacks luster.

Edit: Also, I love the cursed items. But I'd love to see what I mentioned above but in lieu of some of the rare/superrareawesome junk, have the same but cursed, i.e. a trade-off. Again, interesting decisions to make about items/upgrades are what make games like DDO robust in their gear. You don't just look at the obvious mainstat/otherstats and slap on the obvious choice, you have to mix and match, give and take, plan ahead, think about it.. not so in the current system. But some item akin to the old rare prefix/sufix (the cyan border stuff) that was rare BUT cursed, and thus on a higher drop chance (kind've a you almost got a rare, but not quite, but here's something pretty good with a slight drawback) would be great. Same with old racial stuff or other weird restrictions, it adds flavor. More flavor if what DDO needs now. Also also, sets are a very cool and kinda underused mechanic. The decision to trade off other slots for an overall boost and such is a fun one to make, and it's all the more fun to hunt down sets.. but dangerously enough, sets can kinda end up being a no-brainer if all their bonuses are just plain too good.

Also also - wearing pretty much all non-named stuff, save for voice of the master, coronach, and blademark's docent on my 9ish dual-class artificer. There's just nothing that compares with some of these items - at level 9 I've got wiz5 cloak, 5int goggles, 5str bracer, deadly 5, speed v, accuracy 5 random drops.

[GeneralDiomedes]

Issues with random loot

• Too many overpowered effects that drop too frequently. There needs to be slightly more garbage out there, and 'perfect' combinations and more powerful effects need to drop less frequently. Increase even more the excitement of opening a chest and motivation to loot farm and check the auction house. Speed, Deadly, Resistance, Stat items all seem to drop like candy. I like the new effects introduced with Shadowfell, I just think the loot gods got a little carried away.
• No thought seems to have gone into the relative power of some effects when calculating the min level. Examples
• Deadly - +6 damage by the early teens seems OP
• Resistance - I have a min level 7 cloak with +5 resistance. Incredible
• Roman numeral damage effects - They quickly overtake older named effects at higher levels. I get the reason, just kind of depressing that a lot of cool effects are obsolete
• We have this odd mixture now of old and new effects. It really is quite a mess.
• A lot of named items have not been scaled up to be desirable at level vs random loot. e.g. Boots of the Innocent. Not sure if random should be scaled down or named scaled up.
• I liked the UMD restriction on race restricted stuff. It added another dimension to builds. It would be nice to bring something similiar back, no matter how illogical.

What I like about random loot

• New effects combined with random augment slots means opening a chest is MUCH more exciting than pre-Shadowfell. Well not quite on the par of wounding of puncturing, there are still some great combinations that can arise. I like that thrill.
• Augments are always fun to pull
• Non-raiders can still get some decent gear
• Limiting some effects to Cannith-crafting only was a great idea, even if greater banes are about the only thing power gamers are going to craft.

p.s. I really hope FoS didn't get thrown under the bus

[CaptainSpacePony]

Underserved item types:
-Docent
-Maul
-Warhammer
-Shields
-kama
-hand axe (should be a mart wpn, since monks get them as a wpn prof)
-Trinket

Overserved item types:
-Khopesh

Things I'd like to see:
-Better/more interesting weapon suffixes.
-More precise names (Flaming X, rather than just Flaming)
-Raid loot > Named loot > random loot
-Cannith crafting (not what you asked for) needs a shot in the arm.

I also like sets and upgradable stuff.
A prism2 wand would be fun too. Random effects are often interesting, if the random table is large enough.

[Rathic]

Insta kill abilities should work off hp% or scale with ML of the item, a vorpal/banishing/disruption weapon should be able to kill anything less than 50%hp or 1000hp, whichever is greater, and do 5% of total HP or 100 damage on vorp whichever is greater. 1000hp threshold and 100hp damage otherwise is completely worthless when mobs have 600000hp.

Also, simple +W is not scaling well at all. names items have increased weapon Die that make +W attractive, but anything with less than D10 for a base die makes +W effects add very little. look at the frostbite blade or any ML25+ scimitar, if you have an ability that bumps up the weapon damage by 1W, you get an extra 3.5 damage per attack and 7 damage per crit. Now look at the oathblade, ML 20 (it already starts at 2.5[1d10]) if you bump up it's damage by 1W you get 5.5 damage per hit and 11 damage per crit.

On named 2 handers it gets even more ridiculous.

[CaptainSpacePony]

Forgot to mention that I'd also really like to see:
-Some older named and raid loot get a refresh.
-Legacy Epic Items need an overhaul. I recommend new versions have MLs tied to the new Epic Quest level. (Carnival ML20, where as VoN ML22). In general, these items should be VERY good for their ML considering how hard they are to get/make.