Why are so many leaving the game?

[Teh_Troll]

He is wrong in viewing the game as one of those two options because there are a lot of players who enjoying playing as a team. It is not limited to a choice of either you become self-sufficient OR you hope to find people willing to follow you around and take care of you; you have other options.

What are the other options you speak of?

[Qhualor]

I would agree with you, except for the fact that you can always build a self sufficient toon. If you choose not to, then you choose not to. People that build toons that aren't self sufficient have decided that it's more fun to run around and have other people take care of them. This is all fine and good. If that's your thing, then that's your thing. But the problem is that you also have to convince others to actually follow you around and take care of you. This isn't something that is really fun, so you're going to have a bad time when these people don't exist.

Isn't every character self sufficient? It takes 0 umd to drink pots. Most people in this game have put aside wanting a babysitter and instead want team players. That doesn't mean because some don't have umd to scroll heal or have a blue bar for heals than that means they need someone to follow them around. Its just easier to be self sufficient with certain builds while other builds haven't caught up to the way the game has evolved.

[dunklezhan]

Fun for who?

How is one method of fun superior than any others?

It absolutely is not!

I'm just saying, his view of it, if I read it right, is that you are convincing others to 'follow you around and take care of you'. Whereas it can be seen as 'taking care of others while they take care of you'. They're both fun, they're both valid. But the way he put it was biased, or at least, appeared to come from the position that self sufficiency is 'superior' itself in terms of fun. With which I do not agree, though I certainly think it's fun. I simply provided the opposite bias, but I tried to do it without putting the other view down. Clearly I failed, so I'm sorry about that.

[dunklezhan]

What are the other options you speak of?

So far we're up to three options:

Persuading people to follow you and look after you while you achieve the goal
being fully self sufficient and achieving the goal
looking after other people while they look after you, working as a team to achieve the goal.

I'm sure there are more. Its a ridiculous argument. Play with people who want what you want and you will have fun. Even if that is never grouping and always playing solo, but chatting in guild with like minded soloists. You'll still have fun.

The problem is when group x views the other groups as somehow inferior, or a nuisance, but doesn't take real steps to avoid them, like joining or forming a guild with like minded players for example. That leads to exactly this kind of thread. That kind of apathy is the threat, not the way people play.

[mobrien316]

What are the other options you speak of?

Playing as a team, with everyone supporting everyone else, rather than with everyone following one guy and taking care of him.

[Teh_Troll]

It absolutely is not!

I'm just saying, his view of it, if I read it right, is that you are convincing others to 'follow you around and take care of you'. Whereas it can be seen as 'taking care of others while they take care of you'. They're both fun, they're both valid. But the way he put it was biased. I simply provided the opposite bias, but I tried to do it without putting the other view down. Clearly I failed, so I'm sorry about that.

No way is superior to anyones . . . but the BYOH crowd doesn't need anyone else to get stuff done and those who aren't self-sufficient do need others.

It is a conscious decision to not be self-sufficient. The OP has at least 10 PLs and should know this. Pretty much . . . he has no right to complain about this situation. A new player sure, especially those who come from other games.

Look, we all can't be Teh_Troll. I have my legions of minions to hjeal me. You mammals don't have that option.

[Teh_Troll]

Playing as a team, with everyone supporting everyone else, rather than with everyone following one guy and taking care of him.

i prefer using the other 5 people as distractions.

[Bowser_Koopa]

Since your gone can I haz your stuffs?

If you can some how convince my wife to log into my account and give you all my stuff your welcome to it.

[Vellrad]

People are leaving DDO, because there is no endgame (no, constant leveling is not end game, end game is activities after you're no longer gathering XP), and because the game is to easy, and because there are no raids at level cap (raids are defined as: long, tough, needing more than standard party, and awarding raid loot, which should be better than random junk).

[danotmano1998]

i prefer using the other 5 people as distractions.

This is why cosmetic pets are such a fail, IMO.
At least they could have been our land-mine detectors...

Why is there no "Push the fuzzy cub ahead of you down the hall" option?
If I could use them to detect traps, I'd probably buy a couple.


Your quote reminds me: "When running for your life, you don't have to be the fastest. You just have to be faster than the other guy."

[jcoleman12213]

I stopped reading at "this game is centered around the elitists."

[toaftoaf]

Since your gone can I haz your stuffs?

can't even really say that anymore, there isnt much that is not BTC

[voodoogroves]

It isn't that, though that may bug you.

Ultimately, we all have limited time for our recreational pursuits - even those of us with all day to spend doing whatever we want.

Maybe grouping is part of it. I'm more likely to think it is content and game structure. Regardless, any new shiny comes along with nifty stuff folks are going to give it a try for a bit rather than recycling the good content in DDO they still enjoy (but again, repeating) or trudging through the newer stuff which many dislike.

My play time has dropped drastically. It could pick back up, but not seeing anything so far likely to lure me out of my regular static group and get back on the grind wagon like I was for a few years.

[Wipey]

I agree with OP.
Just yesterday I joined good Cetus-ish dude for EE Stay at the inn on my ranger.
Legend rogue and some fighter joins, they die promptly in first fight to first mob. They keep dying whole quest, almost zero kills.
Die to Wrath boss " because we lvl 28 melees can't hold aggro" LOL.

I am sorry I didnt spend my Cocoons,CSW and scrolls on them, I fail at teamwork.
Free piking, chests, EE completion is not enough.

[GeneralDiomedes]

Some changes have catered to the elite, but the majority of changes in this game have catered to casuals. Being a casual player has never been easier.

[jalont]

Playing as a team, with everyone supporting everyone else, rather than with everyone following one guy and taking care of him.

If I'm a barb that cannot heal, who is supporting me? If people want to play that way, fine. But it seems that the OP's problem is that they can't play the way they want to. If people want to play as a "team", whatever that means, then more power to them. I don't understand what the problem is then.

[mobrien316]

If I'm a barb that cannot heal, who is supporting me? If people want to play that way, fine. But it seems that the OP's problem is that they can't play the way they want to. If people want to play as a "team", whatever that means, then more power to them. I don't understand what the problem is then.

The OP seems to have encountered of late mostly (or entirely) people who are of the opinion that if you are not a super-uber self-sufficient "approved" build with "approved" gear, then you are gimp and they don't want to group with you.

It is worth pointing out to the OP (and to anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation) that there are plenty of players who are happy to group with anyone who isn't a rude jerk. These players routine accept the first five or eleven people who hit their LFM and still successfully complete 99% of all content.

[MonadRebelion]

Simple. This is an MMO but the elitists have *****ed and moaned enough that the devs lubed the squeaky wheel. Because of the divine power blessed among the 20 elitists per server and their godly like gaming ability that exceeds most of the rest of us, they get on the forum and ***** and moan about almost everything in the game to a point that the devs have made this a game catered to them.

Now it seems to be considered a competent player one must be totally self sufficient. My barbarian is expected to get traps, cc and self heal all while dealing out a mass amount of damage. Clerics and favored souls get insulted if you expect them to act as a healer. Rangers are expected to have all their arcane archer imbuement’s running at once and so are the monk druids with their bugged wraps. Oh but wait we are not supposed to say that out loud are we. Basically if you can’t solo the whole game you are considered gimp.

This is completely contradictive of what Dungeons and Dragons is all about. D&D is a SOCIAL game. It was made for a group to get together and work as a team. Add that to the fact that this video game is classified as an MMO but not a PvP based MMO then the only guide for success is to design the game for groups not for soloing. In fact people should be punished for soloing a dungeon. If you solo something on EE good for you here’s you cookie, but your loot tables should suffer greatly. How about this. If you have heal and cure spells and don’t cast them on others your loot tables drop. These are the types of things turbine should be considering.

This could go on but I know it is in vein. To keep the game alive Turbine needs to cater the game to people like me. The thing about people like me is we would rather spend our free time playing the game not spending hours on the forums trying to META game every aspect of the game. That is why my opinions will most likely be disregarded as a minority. That may be true for those who are regular posters on the forums but most people don’t even participate in the forums as much as I do which as you can see by my post count isn’t a whole lot since I started in 2009. So I write this for the devs (the few who haven’t been laid off) maybe you can cater to the people you have lost by lubing the squeaky wheel and keep your jobs. If you do get laid off and had anything to do with the decision as to the direction this game has gone please do not apply for jobs at CD Projekt Red, Bethesda or Zenimax as I don’t want their games ruined too.

This is supposed to be a game for enjoyment. It has turned into a job.

On the hand, I can feel your pain. There is a kind of silly competitive antisocial elitism in some segments of the population. This is annoying and I think we'd be better off without it. On the other hand, I can't agree with the idea that a certain kind of elite play-style (note that there is no necessary connection between antisocial elitism and an elite play-style) is what drives the development of content, unless you mean to say that the direction of development is toward making an elite play-style more widely available to the player population. Let me explain this a bit. As I see it, if the game was catering to elite play-styles as a way to challenge players there would be more content like the Abbot raid. They would make attaining epic items challenging like they did with the scroll, seal, and shard system. They would limit sources of healing, buffing, etc. as they did by making it hard to get back spell points with shrines that can only be used once. The list could go on but I'll stop there since it is hopefully clear what I mean. What I have noticed, however, is that they have not put out content as difficult as the Abbot raid. They made it much easier to get really good epic gear just by getting the end reward for running a series of quests, from buying stuff on the auction houses, and even random loot. I have also noticed the addition of about a dozen ways to passively regenerate spell points along with the introduction of low cost sla's, in this way making shrines much less important. (Does the addition of casual, normal, hard, and elite epic settings merit a mention?) Thus, it seems to me that the way the game has developed has made elite play-styles much easier to attain and imitate. If I had to speculate about what drove development in this direction I wouldn't guess that it was merely the existence people to like the challenge of what elite gameplay used to be. This might be uncharitable, but I'd guess it was the existence of people complaining about how hard it was for them to do x, y, and z. Perhaps these complaints grew quite loud given the fact that the complainers had such a sense of entitlement as they were aware of folks who were able to do x, y, and z.

For my part, since there is a lot of stuff I like about the game, I just stick to doing that and find relatively little to complain about. Maybe that is good advice, maybe not. I hope you find some cool folks, who aren't antisocial, to run with.

[Memnir]

Simple. This is an MMO but the elitists have *****ed and moaned enough that the devs lubed the squeaky wheel. Because of the divine power blessed among the 20 elitists per server and their godly like gaming ability that exceeds most of the rest of us, they get on the forum and ***** and moan about almost everything in the game to a point that the devs have made this a game catered to them.

Funny, in my experience the game has skewed far more in favor of Casual Gamers then Elitists - and that is more to blame for folks leaving then anything you mentioned. And I say that as a former elitist-turned-casual player.


Not to mention overarching game design choices that nobody asked for, but we were just handed.

To keep the game alive Turbine needs to cater the game to people like me.

Actually laugh out loud funny. I mean it - that's comic irony on a grand scale. It's wrong when some folks post on the forums and want the Devs to kowtow to their views - but not when you do it. Gotcha.


/moving on

[-Avalon-]

Man, I hate coming into a conversation late...

Look, we all can't be Teh_Troll. I have my legions of minions to hjeal me. You mammals don't have that option.

Trolls are mammals, but we still hjeal your confused mammalian butt.

i prefer using the other 5 people as distractions.

I agree, 6 player parties are ALWAYS 1 player plus 5 distractions. If you think you don't use the other players as distractions, then you are lying to yourself, go solo and see what happens... it's a lot harder and requires different strategies, why? Because you don't have 5 other people distracting the bad guys...

If you can some how convince my wife to log into my account and give you all my stuff your welcome to it.

(insert snappy comeback about telling her this weekend when she spends the night) and btw, just picking! =)

This is why cosmetic pets are such a fail, IMO.
At least they could have been our land-mine detectors...

Why is there no "Push the fuzzy cub ahead of you down the hall" option?
If I could use them to detect traps, I'd probably buy a couple.


Your quote reminds me: "When running for your life, you don't have to be the fastest. You just have to be faster than the other guy."

LOL, Yep, I ran a game once that had the players come across an archway trapped with ancient draconic magic (from Draconomicon, 1st/2nd edition IIRC), it had 50 charges and would drain levels at 1/charge if any creature crossed through it. So, if you were 20th lvl, it would drain 20 levels, kill you, then have 30 left (which could be recharged when the dragon got around to it)

The wizard detected the magics (my group was surprisingly untrusting and suspicious about pretty much everything in my games and spent hours in-game walking down a single hallway searching and probing everything in their environment), spent the time to analyze the magics to see what spell it was (he knew of draconic magics), then cast cantrip. Which back then did all sorts of things, among them was summoning a small animal (like a rat, or robin, or squirrel, or whatever) of roughly 1/8 HD. And he could do this once per round. 400 rounds later the magic was depleted, and there was a VERY large mound of dead rats... (yes, I know, 400 rounds is about 6-7 hours, and that equates to about 5 casts of cantrip, they were willing to sit and wait, keep watch while the wizard sacrificed countless rats)

I stopped reading at "this game is centered around the elitists."

This game is centered around casuals wanting to be elitists, therefore they are willing to spend money in the attempt to become elite, and once they get there, they most often do what most elitists do in DDO... quit. This is why there are only 10-20 elitists on each server, because the hundreds that came before them, left, but not before Turbine made money off of them.

Funny, in my experience the game has skewed far more in favor of Casual Gamers then Elitists - and that is more to blame for folks leaving then anything you mentioned. And I say that as a former elitist-turned-casual player.

Yep, that is the other thing that happens, Elitists figure out the real game, and either leave, or turn back to being casual and just start enjoying the game.

I finally made a toon that scares me every time I play it... mainly because it CAN be so squishy at times (almost always when lag hits and never other times pretty much), but does 200-500 per hit base 70% of time, 20% of time hits around 80-100, and 10% of time hits for 1000-2000... and this is base attacks, not the special +3[w] or whatever attacks... just holding down the button and attacking...

And I hate playing it... I think I have reached a point where I have accomplished what I wanted, and made a build that is just plain ridiculous, and now I want to go back to playing my death knight with heavy armor and shield, relax and just go do EH quests... too much effort and stress to do EE and be able to solo it, etc... screw all that, it really isn't worth all the effort I put into getting there, and wish others would just relax and enjoy the game as well.