Holiday Producer's Letter

[Havok.cry]

I bet you're the guy who wants the +20 Destruction Disintegrating Disrupting Metaline Aligned Handraps of Greater Everything Bane. You quit picking on my musician, glasshoppah or I'll make you sit through 24 hours of "Achy-Breaky Heart". So there!

Those handwraps would be gimp. I just want +ghostbane ghostbane handwraps of ghostbane.

[Todkaninchen]

Those handwraps would be gimp. I just want +ghostbane ghostbane handwraps of ghostbane.

I want +20 Destruction Disintegrating Disrupting Metaline Aligned Handraps of Greater Everything Bane. I want to make a dog collar out of them.

[SirValentine]

Bards are too OP. So instead lets remove perform as a bard class skill, and remove the bardic music. Then update monks to get perform as a class skill and give them bardic music.

Well, Perform is supposed to be a class skill for Monks!

(And for Rogues, too. And it should be usable untrained by anyone.)

[Lanhelin]

One concept that we’re working through (but not promising) is end-game items. Initial proposals for this had internal names like “Greensteel 2,” “Intelligent Weapons” and “Sentient Weapons.” (Yes, there are implications of difference between “Intelligent” and “Sentient” weapons, depending on the version of D&D.) Ultimately these are items that are acquired in the endgame, earn experience and advance with you, and could require you to sacrifice other equipment to them to develop their power. Design has barely begun on this, but it may release in multiple phases and include crafting elements.

I didn't read the whole thread, so this might have been mentioned already: This reminds me of the Legendary Item System Turbine uses in Lotro. Please do not introduce this in this form in DDO. I know that once we reach the Level Cap there's the question of what to advance next. But this shouldn't be items-to-level only, it always should be the character. Vertical progression is fine, but there are so many gameplay systems in DDO, that then it should be time for horizontal progression too. You already stated Player Housing. Good!

A possibility would be to join different Factions and advance in their hierarchy, like Paladins, Clerics and Favored Souls could join the Temple of their choice, Wizards and Sorcerers the Twelve, Fighters and Barbarians the Deneith sellsword guild, Rogues the Coin Lords, Artificers House Cannith and so on. Multiclass Characters have to decide. With a storyline and some quests that are spread all over Eberron/FR. This could also be combined with Player Housing (different styles depending on the Faction a player joined). Embedded in a story this would fit better with the "Intelligent Weapons" like to get them as a gift at the start and while advancing in the faction the weapon becomes more powerful. It could also be combined with stories around Level 30 NPCs, who, as part of advancing in the faction, become permanent Hires at some point. But introducing just the weapons alone won't be the best idea I guess. Embedded in a story and together with vertical and horizontal progression it'd be some kind of feeling to break out of the hamster wheel, while actually still staying in but running it under pleasant circumstances.

[Havok.cry]

I didn't read the whole thread, so this might have been mentioned already: This reminds me of the Legendary Item System Turbine uses in Lotro. Please do not introduce this in this form in DDO. I know that once we reach the Level Cap there's the question of what to advance next. But this shouldn't be items-to-level only, it always should be the character. Vertical progression is fine, but there are so many gameplay systems in DDO, that then it should be time for horizontal progression too. You already stated Player Housing. Good!

A possibility would be to join different Factions and advance in their hierarchy, like Paladins, Clerics and Favored Souls could join the Temple of their choice, Wizards and Sorcerers the Twelve, Fighters and Barbarians the Deneith sellsword guild, Rogues the Coin Lords, Artificers House Cannith and so on. Multiclass Characters have to decide. With a storyline and some quests that are spread all over Eberron/FR. This could also be combined with Player Housing (different styles depending on the Faction a player joined). Embedded in a story this would fit better with the "Intelligent Weapons" like to get them as a gift at the start and while advancing in the faction the weapon becomes more powerful. It could also be combined with stories around Level 30 NPCs, who, as part of advancing in the faction, become permanent Hires at some point. But introducing just the weapons alone won't be the best idea I guess. Embedded in a story and together with vertical and horizontal progression it'd be some kind of feeling to break out of the hamster wheel, while actually still staying in but running it under pleasant circumstances.

I like your idea about NPC that becomes a hireling. I think it would be awesome to have quests/chains/sagas that let you build-you-own hireling. Would find it much, much more interesting and useful than intelligent weapons. I also like the idea of progressing through factions. The current favor system is kind of just meh imho.

Honestly I hope the "shiny new weapon crafting system" they decide to go with will be epic greensteel. Ooze2 is the biggest thing in the game that keeps me coming back as far as items go, and having a similar effect (the summoning part, I couldn't care less about the sunder part) on a higher level weapon would make me enjoy epic levels a great deal more.

[Clatterfist]

That all sounds both absolutely awesome and intelligently well ordered - very exciting stuff!

[Xerio]

I've skimmed other posts and will most likely repeat something. Lots of cool ideas here already.

• Classes
  Since we're knocking around ideas of classes; Psion, Avenger, Warden, Warlock
• Races
  Gensai, Aashmadi, Tiefling, Orc, Gnome, Shifter
• Enhancements
  Several classes could easily take on another enhancement tree, personally I would love to see Elemental Binder added to the Artificer (Several names or enhancement headers here will be random thoughts and most likely SHOULD be replaced.. they'll probably be lame)
  Artificer; Elemental Binder, Flesh of steel (think expansion of the fleshie artificer class feat construct essense)
  Avenger; Divine instrument (favored weapon damage enhancements), Gray Soul (additional armor/tanking), Scales of Justice (healing/damage hybrid)
  Barbarian; Controlled rage (sort of like fury made placid, focusing on enduring the hit and outlasting the assault than brute force)
  Bard; Jack of all trades (Access to rogue skills/abilities, ability to pick a single class to be considered multi classed of for the sake of scrolls/spells)
  Cleric; Dark Pact (thats right Evil priest! we all want it.. you lose all healing ability gain an undead form akin to the pale master focus on negative magics)
  Druid; Grove guardian (healing focus enhancement line)
  Favored Soul; Dark Avenger (similar to the cleric dark pact idea but more melee focused, thinking favored weapon attacks/damage and DRs)
  Fighter; Feralkin (cursed/supernatural idea something akin to werewolf), sword sage/duelist (finesse fighter bonus' to light armor)
  Monk; Drunken Master (self explanatory), Tattooed monk (loved this prestige in pen and paper, super natural tattoos grant the monk magical spell like abilities)
  Paladin; Fallen Knight (Death knight)
  Psion; Metamind, Soulknife, puppet master
  Ranger; Beastmaster (come on now why hasn't this been implemented..), one with the beast(feral/werewolf melee)
  Rogue; Spell Thief (Gain spell slots as if you where a wizard/sorcerer of 1/2 your rogue level)
  Sorcerer; Fiend Pact (demonic style akin to the pale master, life drain spells)
  Warlock; Fiend pact, Pyromancer, Plaguebearer
  Warden; Elemental Steward (elemental forms/spell power), Grove guardian (healing again), scion (enhancement spells/abilities, sort of like arti/eldrich knight)
  Wizard; Planeshifter (increased DC banishment, planar magics, elemental/demon bane)
  
  Racial-
  Gensai; elemental savant
  Gnome; illusion magic DC/puppetmaster?
  Darkelf; ebberon or forgotten realms focus since they're penalized as if they are a +2 race give them the choice of being from either setting, forgotten realms allowing slow fall/fairy fire/darkness-blind
  Aashmadi; radiant savant
  Tiefling; fiend pact
  Orc; Occult Slayer
  Shifter; Animal Warrior
• Epic Destinies
  Addition of Cleric destiny would rock, think i recall reading this was already in the plans
• "Old" epics (seals, scrolls,shards)
  upgrade them to be contenders to the forgotten realms items or implement a tier system with them like raid items, charge Tokens of the twelve to upgrade the item.
• Alchemical Items
  Add tier 4-6 to these the final tier making them a lvl 28 item.
  add armors to the alchemical make up, many of us still use greensteel clothing/jewelry because they just cover so many bases!
• Greensteel 2.0
  saw someone else mention this one and that it was in the works. Part of me says yaaa further upgrade to the old green steel stuff another side says well ship now i have to make ANOTHER blahblah blah. Think I'd rather see these implemented as separate items from the current items entirely. Green steel is amazing for the TR run.

that about wraps up my 2014 wish list for DDO! Doubt I'll see any of it but said my piece.

Feylord, Sarlona

[iceblader50]

The main thing that I would like to see in the player housing industry, simply put, is to make it platinum based, there's way to much platinum in circulation, and making it platinum based would help get rid of some of the currency. There are many more ideas people could come up with based on these systems, and from what I've read about the sentient/intelligent weapons, I've seen a lot of doom about them seeming similar to LOTRO's legendary weapons, if so, I would have to agree, these are two completely different games and should not coincide with each other, so if you wish to implement it, please, think up a different system, other than that, i can't think of much else to talk about as of right now.

[Silkenwise]

I have seen it mentioned in the thread previously, but I will happily add my voice to this chorus:

Please, please, please add EPIC options to The Shroud raid in vale of twilight.

...and while you're in there tinkering with it, update and fix the buggy and broken shroud collectible items quests. As things are right now: one of the objects never drops, two of the quest giver NPC are permanently grayed out and do not give the required quests for turn-in, and collecting the items themselves is also broken. Only the PC who lands a killing blow gets the shard, even if another player picks it up.

[Flavilandile]

I know I already posted a long long (wish)list ... But here is another one :

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...-December-20th

noticed they never mention the reason for the restart

^THIS^ It should change.... Communicate... Communicate...

Crashes I can understand that they can have no real trackable reason...
I spend my day looking at crashes ( well crash tickets ), crash files and other things that are supposed to help me find why it behaved the way it behaved ( aka went belly up ), and more than once despite the help of a whole multinational company and numerous developers we can't find the reason.

But Maintenance :
- as in Maintenance Window, that's a term you should talk to with your staff... Because Maintenance Window is usually incompatible with Peak Hour, and you maintenance window has been encroaching in the Peak hour for ages
- as in Planned Maintenance ( that comes in the maintenance window ) defines a set of operations that are being done, so you ( or at least some people at Turbine ) knows what is done during the maintenance, it would be nice for us to know some of it too. Nothing really specific, but stuff like : disk array upgrade, server system patching, notwork switches upgrade and juggling...
- as in (Un)planned Maintenance ( aka the dreaded broadcast message : the swerver will be brought down in 10 minutes for maintenance, like what I linked above ). Telling us roughly why the (un)planned maintenance is being done would help in the communication domain.

Laconical one-liners are good for twtter, they are not good for the official outlet that should be these forums.

[prophet1]

Just a suggestion , on days the server is down , why don t you give a generic responce to us ppl trying to log in , all the time we get difrent error messages or make it to the world server and there down , how about a simple message telling us that this is under repair or maintence so we know , not left guessing if its our comp or the connection to the internet , so we wouldn t waste so much of both our times posting to you about this issue or that a simple message saying " server bla bla bla ddo is working on it or maybe fixing the problem thank you for your patience"

[HotMaarl]

Just poking my head in to see what's up. Looks like more of the same old flushing of people's childhood DnD memories down the drain again for 2014.

Prod. Rowan, DDO has become a broken mess. And you've made us feel like we wasted so much time on loot/leveling systems you simply busted or abandoned. There's no point in working towards anything anymore because someone else will (a) just get it via exploit (b) buy it with shards or (c) Turbine will just implement a new system, relegating the old system to trash.

You don't reward our time commitment. You just invent new carrot-chasing schemes. I think that's how most of the vets here perceive your letter when they read between the lines.

Wish you well man because I know some of your crew are passionate about DnD but it's obvious to everyone in the room that this game is down to it's final inner core of fanatical, big-spending supporters.

[Angelic-council]

I would like to see bug fixes.. People can't just run new quests with bugged spells and items(?)

Also, I think many people will agree with me on this, but I would like to see EDs level cap increase. level 6 - 10.
Maybe you can call it ultimate destiny: once you cap one epic destiny which is max level6, you can scroll up and there will be
another fantastic destiny.. Like, Exalted angel.. scroll up, exalted arch angel. or something like that..

[Sorwen]

1) Templates(Vampire, Werewolf, Celestial, etc.) as Enhancement trees available to every race(though likely no Warforge).
2) Half-Dragon as a race or Iconic Hero.
3) Shadowdancer and Blackguard Enhancement tree.

[Teh_Troll]

Just poking my head in to see what's up. Looks like more of the same old flushing of people's childhood DnD memories down the drain again for 2014.

Prod. Rowan, DDO has become a broken mess. And you've made us feel like we wasted so much time on loot/leveling systems you simply busted or abandoned. There's no point in working towards anything anymore because someone else will (a) just get it via exploit (b) buy it with shards or (c) Turbine will just implement a new system, relegating the old system to trash.

You don't reward our time commitment. You just invent new carrot-chasing schemes. I think that's how most of the vets here perceive your letter when they read between the lines.

Wish you well man because I know some of your crew are passionate about DnD but it's obvious to everyone in the room that this game is down to it's final inner core of fanatical, big-spending supporters.

But it all would be fine if you nerf the hell out of monks.

[Todkaninchen]

But it all would be fine if you nerf the hell out of monks.

Wow, dude. You need a whambulance for that condition.

I mean, really, what happen? A monk steal your dad away from your mom? Ninjas kill your pet gerbil as a kid? A Henshin mess with you and tell you to find wisdom in another castle?

*grin*

It's an unusual class with a lot of defensive ability and some decent DPS. It's not an uber-caster which rules a lot of quests. It has very little in the way of crowd control. No (base) trap skills. Requires a good build to work well and--even then--it's intensive to play, moreso than most other non-caster classes and--even then--most casters can be played as nukers or spammers with little thought.

If you wanted to nerf, I don't know, barbarians it might make more sense because what do they do? Spam cleave/great cleave and cleave-like abilities with a bone-simple basic build that generally only requires a max STR/max CON/ and maybe a few points in DEX to build instead of having to balance out 4 or 5 attributes to be successful...

Literally, almost every other character class in the game can be managed with only 2 or 3 attributes to focus on. Paladin is probably the exception (CHA/STR/CON with DEX depending on build).

If anything, you picked one of the more difficult classes to both build and play--something commensurate with deserving a little more ability when they get it right--to want to nerf instead of something totally simplistic like sorcerer or barbarian or something. That's kinda' silly, there, big guy.

Actually, now I want to see an epic Troll monk as a raid boss. Just for fun.

I think that would be cool.

[Huldrekall]

another thing I wish to see:
sorcerer auras. and I know how to skip issue with them. they will be in tier 5 enh. so just one can we have, even we have more trees activated

also maybe wilderness difficulties, but not as just stronger mobs, but more like insted of kill 9000 something, there will be armies marching upon us, like deil assault or something

[Teh_Troll]

Wow, dude. You need a whambulance for that condition.

I mean, really, what happen? A monk steal your dad away from your mom? Ninjas kill your pet gerbil as a kid? A Henshin mess with you and tell you to find wisdom in another castle?

*grin*

It's an unusual class with a lot of defensive ability and some decent DPS. It's not an uber-caster which rules a lot of quests. It has very little in the way of crowd control. No (base) trap skills. Requires a good build to work well and--even then--it's intensive to play, moreso than most other non-caster classes and--even then--most casters can be played as nukers or spammers with little thought.

If you wanted to nerf, I don't know, barbarians it might make more sense because what do they do? Spam cleave/great cleave and cleave-like abilities with a bone-simple basic build that generally only requires a max STR/max CON/ and maybe a few points in DEX to build instead of having to balance out 4 or 5 attributes to be successful...

Literally, almost every other character class in the game can be managed with only 2 or 3 attributes to focus on. Paladin is probably the exception (CHA/STR/CON with DEX depending on build).

If anything, you picked one of the more difficult classes to both build and play--something commensurate with deserving a little more ability when they get it right--to want to nerf instead of something totally simplistic like sorcerer or barbarian or something. That's kinda' silly, there, big guy.

Actually, now I want to see an epic Troll monk as a raid boss. Just for fun.

I think that would be cool.

Sign up for my "How to not be terrible at DDO" course, you need some education.

[Grizzt14]

But it all would be fine if you nerf the hell out of monks.

Like it or not, it's not happening and it won't be the sacred fix needed to rebalance the melee (and ranged) classes. Barbarians need survivability boosts through prr and dr as well as removing rage cancelling out spellcasting (which also disables most forms of self-healing) makes rage far too big a burden in current EE design. Paladins need an all-around increase in dps, perhaps through a new tree or a serious redesign of KotC. Rangers need doubleshot to become relevant, which through granting a feat at 20 ranger to remove the doubleshot debuff from Manyshot (likely a small increase to TWF to fit established Ranger feat themes as well) and an overall increase in all non-item sources of doubleshot could easily bring Ranger back.

All of the above could benefit from dodge cap restrictions on all forms of armor being abolished so that each "level" of armor would begin at 25% dodge cap. There are likely many more fixes in other classes that could make them more appealing, but nerfing monks will not suddenly make the above classes and others better. Tanking as a concept in DDO also needs a serious rethink from the development side, but that is its own topic in and of itself.

That all said, I'd love to see a new race, especially gnomes or tiefling (redesign the horns to be smaller please) or a new unique class to add to the mix.

PS: Before anyone chimes in that I play all monks now, prior to enhancement pass I had at various times each of the above classes and would happily consider them again were they to be brought back into relevance.

[Nightmanis]

--Magister: almost compelling for a caster, until you made DC casting in EE's unattainable. Fail.
DC casting works fairly well now. I see people using it constantly.
--Draconic: Energy Burst Twist? Awesome. Everything else? Show me one sorc out of 1000 that uses DI instead of Shiradi, and I will show you a sorc who doesn't run EE's. Nuff Said.
A LOT, and a LOT in EE. I actually see Shiradis struggling a lot anymore.

--Ranged Characters, ironically, have 1 destiny, and that's FoTW. Nothing else comes close. Shiradi procs dont add nearly the damage you can get with an Adrenaline/Slayer arrow meaning ALL RANGED CHARACTERS must run Fury, or be a pathetic joke. Some variety. Shiradi is occasionally ok in some very rare circumstances like specific Shuriken builds. But even then based on my testing it's not especially compelling over FoTW.
People have been running Shiradi recently because it's better for less spiking dps. While fury is the best, people still do run in Shiradi and some even in Dread.