Oceann's Ideas for DDO 2

[Syllph]

Long time no see everyone. I used to play DDO, quite a lot actually. If any of you have been around for a while on Argo you might remember seeing my name, Oceann.

I left DDO a year or so ago because the game just seemed like there was so much potential wasted. This isn't a rant about the game, merely some fun thoughts I've been thinking about ever since I left. This will work with what I consider a problem followed by a solution. I don't really think any of these will be implemented this is just fun for me.

The potential I saw was all the half done concepts and wasted time. Some of these include:

Wasted inventory slots

New updates make old quests and quest items outdated. (no need to re-play)

Crafting

Quest XP

Guilds and the entire chat system

Combat and defense

Wasted Inventory Slots

Problem: This could have been amazing. The slot here is the quiver slot. Honestly, unless you played a ranged character this slot did little to nothing. Sure there is the quiver of alacrity that could add 30% striding, but the potential for an amazing character slot was wasted.

Solution: Several new upgradable items. A scabbard, a spell book, a focusing totem, a holy symbol. Each of these items would complement a certain style of play. They could be upgraded a certain amount of times giving each player a slightly different style.

The scabbard for melee players. This would be upgraded to add melee alacrity, extra damage, crit chance and more. The spell book for wizards and totem for sorcerers would likewise add spell pen, elemental damage, spell points on critical hits, etc. The holy symbol would be for divines adding effects like mass (a single target spell is now a group target effect), Crit chance, etc. More obviously could be added to customize each class. This solution gives the slot a use and makes it fun.

New updates make old quests and quest items outdated

Problem: You spend weeks or even months (years) trying to obtain the best item for your build. You fight and sweat and bleed until you finally have it sitting in your inventory. Next week a new item comes out and that items is forever useless. I can't even begin to list all of the countless items I sought for, got, and watched become worthless. Countless epic items, named items, niche items, literally all of my raid items, etc. One update I watched in horror as a random drop from a random chest in a forest outclassed an item that took me months to acquire. Do even new players take the named items from Titan, VoD, Xizzy? Most time on agro I saw they didn't even get sold to a vendor, they actually just sat in the chest to rot. Wasted....

Solution: Item upgrades rather than new items. This system would work much like crafting or the stone of change. New raids and quests don't add new items, they add new effects. Certain quests will drop base items. Tougher quests = better base items. The base items might not look like much alone but would be a starting point for multiple upgrades. Let's use the Sword of Shadows as an example.

Instead of the sword doing anything fancy by itself, it would have higher base stats and crit chance than any other comparable item for that level. Next step we can head over to any of the raids to get upgrades to add to this base. Tempest's Spine: Eye of the Titan. Effect: adds lightning strike to your weapon or lightning strike guard to armor. Now we have a solid base item with lightning strike added. Head over to Vision of Destruction and add healing curse. Now we have the Sword of Shadow with lightning strike and healing curse (mobs can't heal each other). This style of upgrade would allow me to keep the weapon I already have, enjoy the raid, and have a solid upgrade. Head to Tower of Despair and add a colorless slot. Run it again to upgrade to a yellow, and so on until you have multiple slots on each of your items. I have the option of getting a better base item from higher level quests, but I am not forced to trash my already nice weapon for a different weapon each upgrade. I can keep my awesomely upgraded item and keep adding to it. This isn't restricted to only named weapons. This leads to more concepts for upgrades: Crafting

Crafting

Problem: Crafting was broken from the beginning and never truly fixed. One day it actually just went away, only to return sometime later with new concepts that were still not really useful. I managed to grind, painfully, to get crafting to 150 in all three areas. Honestly, I only used it to tweak out a new TR for a few levels until I could wear my greensteel. By level 20 I'm not sure crafting could do anything for any player unless they simply never played raids or ran quests. In other words: Crafting is broken.

Solution: Head over to Master Artificer, win, and have the option to add crafting to any item. Now crafting has a use! That Awesome armor you just got, let's add crafting effects to it. That newly upgraded Sword of Shadows from the previous example – craft it!

Quest XP

Problem: The rewards never seemed to match the play and the XP bonuses did more damage than good. Ever play with someone who slowed the whole group down and needed to break every box just to get the little extra XP? Ever want to break those boxes and the guy leading is zerging (sorry that was me for sure!) the quest making you skip them

Either way, someone got frustrated.

Did anyone ever stop and say, "Really? I slay dragons and battle Goddesses on their native plane – and I'm getting experience for breaking wooden boxes?"

Solution: Personally, I would shift the entire XP bonus from secret doors and breakables over to the conquest bonus. Now we get XP for not skipping mobs and actually battling evil, rather than breaking boxes and casting true sight in front of a secret door we don't actually plan on going through.

Guilds and the chat system

Problem: Guilds didn't really feel very guildy to me. This one is not a big issue but rather an idea. The chat system needed to show the main account and all toons associated to it. We had a sizable guild roster but only about 20 players. Each player may have had five toons, but I could never keep track of who was who. This would make it so I could see instantly, Oh, it's you! I know you.

Solution: For the PVP crowd out there, this next one is for you. I spent so much time hating on PVP I figure I owe it to you. We have already built into the game PVP games (no, not the silly taverns, I will always despise that one). I mean capture the flag and the death match (where all effects, spells, and abilities work). I thought it could be neat if those mini-games gave guilds points to purchase airships. It would be a multi-tiered system, so if you played poorly you would enter a lower tier. (This would hopefully prevent point farming by making a fake guild to beat and get points. You would actually need to play against competitive guilds to rank up, and purchase the next ship). I'm sure the die-hard PVP players could improve on this idea immensely.

Airship buffs should have been implemented differently as well. Firstly, was there really a need to make them timed? They should have been permanent until death. Period. Let's face it, someone in one of your groups complained about needing to go to their ship to rebuff, and it annoyed you. It happened. It didn't need to. Also the buffs on the ship should have not had an expiration. They cost like 1000 play and lasted a week. It wasn't ever going to be a plat sink. It was just annoying to keep them refreshed, and sometimes to even remember which buff is missing when one did expire.

Combat and Defense

Problem: Nothing scaled. Buffs, spells, effects, everything was just broken. Here are some examples to illustrate: You get mass bull's strength at a level when you have everything +6 or better. You have airship buffs that work great at level 1 and do little at level 12. (with some exceptions). Damage effects never really did anything: Thorns did like what 1d6? Mobs have 10s of thousands of hit points. Fire guard, lightning guard, etc. Most of these we worthless.

Solution: The effects from the buffs should have been on a percentage rather than a flat rate. 30 fire resist was good fun at level 1; at level 28 it didn't help that much and with all the gear you have on, it probably didn't help at all. Now 30% fire resist would have scaled through from level 1-28 and all new content. Vampirism would take 1% of the damage done not 1hp (that one was so very stupid), Greensteel regen would give 1% HP back not 1 HP (1200 HP barbs, and 1 HP every 30 sec... think about that one....) Thorns would return a % of damage not 6 HP from their millions.... Spells like bull's strength and spell resist would have their own buff line. So you could take your +6 item, add +2 from ships, and add +4 from the spell buff. Now everyone will be happy that your wizard carries Mass Bear's Endurance. In fact, they will ask you for it each quest!

I hope you enjoyed!

[Lonnbeimnech]

+6 items?
mobs with 10k hp??
barbs???


You really have been gone a while.

[Syllph]

+6 items?
mobs with 10k hp??
barbs???


You really have been gone a while.

Heh, not exactly. The +6 was based on a character around level 15 or so when you get Mass Bull's type spells.

[The_Human_Cypher]

Long time no see everyone. I used to play DDO, quite a lot actually. If any of you have been around for a while on Argo you might remember seeing my name, Oceann.

I left DDO a year or so ago because the game just seemed like there was so much potential wasted. This isn't a rant about the game, merely some fun thoughts I've been thinking about ever since I left. This will work with what I consider a problem followed by a solution. I don't really think any of these will be implemented this is just fun for me.

The potential I saw was all the half done concepts and wasted time. Some of these include:

Wasted inventory slots

New updates make old quests and quest items outdated. (no need to re-play)

Crafting

Quest XP

Guilds and the entire chat system

Combat and defense

Wasted Inventory Slots

Problem: This could have been amazing. The slot here is the quiver slot. Honestly, unless you played a ranged character this slot did little to nothing. Sure there is the quiver of alacrity that could add 30% striding, but the potential for an amazing character slot was wasted.

Solution: Several new upgradable items. A scabbard, a spell book, a focusing totem, a holy symbol. Each of these items would complement a certain style of play. They could be upgraded a certain amount of times giving each player a slightly different style.

The scabbard for melee players. This would be upgraded to add melee alacrity, extra damage, crit chance and more. The spell book for wizards and totem for sorcerers would likewise add spell pen, elemental damage, spell points on critical hits, etc. The holy symbol would be for divines adding effects like mass (a single target spell is now a group target effect), Crit chance, etc. More obviously could be added to customize each class. This solution gives the slot a use and makes it fun.

New updates make old quests and quest items outdated

Problem: You spend weeks or even months (years) trying to obtain the best item for your build. You fight and sweat and bleed until you finally have it sitting in your inventory. Next week a new item comes out and that items is forever useless. I can't even begin to list all of the countless items I sought for, got, and watched become worthless. Countless epic items, named items, niche items, literally all of my raid items, etc. One update I watched in horror as a random drop from a random chest in a forest outclassed an item that took me months to acquire. Do even new players take the named items from Titan, VoD, Xizzy? Most time on agro I saw they didn't even get sold to a vendor, they actually just sat in the chest to rot. Wasted....

Solution: Item upgrades rather than new items. This system would work much like crafting or the stone of change. New raids and quests don't add new items, they add new effects. Certain quests will drop base items. Tougher quests = better base items. The base items might not look like much alone but would be a starting point for multiple upgrades. Let's use the Sword of Shadows as an example.

Instead of the sword doing anything fancy by itself, it would have higher base stats and crit chance than any other comparable item for that level. Next step we can head over to any of the raids to get upgrades to add to this base. Tempest's Spine: Eye of the Titan. Effect: adds lightning strike to your weapon or lightning strike guard to armor. Now we have a solid base item with lightning strike added. Head over to Vision of Destruction and add healing curse. Now we have the Sword of Shadow with lightning strike and healing curse (mobs can't heal each other). This style of upgrade would allow me to keep the weapon I already have, enjoy the raid, and have a solid upgrade. Head to Tower of Despair and add a colorless slot. Run it again to upgrade to a yellow, and so on until you have multiple slots on each of your items. I have the option of getting a better base item from higher level quests, but I am not forced to trash my already nice weapon for a different weapon each upgrade. I can keep my awesomely upgraded item and keep adding to it. This isn't restricted to only named weapons. This leads to more concepts for upgrades: Crafting

Crafting

Problem: Crafting was broken from the beginning and never truly fixed. One day it actually just went away, only to return sometime later with new concepts that were still not really useful. I managed to grind, painfully, to get crafting to 150 in all three areas. Honestly, I only used it to tweak out a new TR for a few levels until I could wear my greensteel. By level 20 I'm not sure crafting could do anything for any player unless they simply never played raids or ran quests. In other words: Crafting is broken.

Solution: Head over to Master Artificer, win, and have the option to add crafting to any item. Now crafting has a use! That Awesome armor you just got, let's add crafting effects to it. That newly upgraded Sword of Shadows from the previous example – craft it!

Quest XP

Problem: The rewards never seemed to match the play and the XP bonuses did more damage than good. Ever play with someone who slowed the whole group down and needed to break every box just to get the little extra XP? Ever want to break those boxes and the guy leading is zerging (sorry that was me for sure!) the quest making you skip them

Either way, someone got frustrated.

Did anyone ever stop and say, "Really? I slay dragons and battle Goddesses on their native plane – and I'm getting experience for breaking wooden boxes?"

Solution: Personally, I would shift the entire XP bonus from secret doors and breakables over to the conquest bonus. Now we get XP for not skipping mobs and actually battling evil, rather than breaking boxes and casting true sight in front of a secret door we don't actually plan on going through.

Guilds and the chat system

Problem: Guilds didn't really feel very guildy to me. This one is not a big issue but rather an idea. The chat system needed to show the main account and all toons associated to it. We had a sizable guild roster but only about 20 players. Each player may have had five toons, but I could never keep track of who was who. This would make it so I could see instantly, Oh, it's you! I know you.

Solution: For the PVP crowd out there, this next one is for you. I spent so much time hating on PVP I figure I owe it to you. We have already built into the game PVP games (no, not the silly taverns, I will always despise that one). I mean capture the flag and the death match (where all effects, spells, and abilities work). I thought it could be neat if those mini-games gave guilds points to purchase airships. It would be a multi-tiered system, so if you played poorly you would enter a lower tier. (This would hopefully prevent point farming by making a fake guild to beat and get points. You would actually need to play against competitive guilds to rank up, and purchase the next ship). I'm sure the die-hard PVP players could improve on this idea immensely.

Airship buffs should have been implemented differently as well. Firstly, was there really a need to make them timed? They should have been permanent until death. Period. Let's face it, someone in one of your groups complained about needing to go to their ship to rebuff, and it annoyed you. It happened. It didn't need to. Also the buffs on the ship should have not had an expiration. They cost like 1000 play and lasted a week. It wasn't ever going to be a plat sink. It was just annoying to keep them refreshed, and sometimes to even remember which buff is missing when one did expire.

Combat and Defense

Problem: Nothing scaled. Buffs, spells, effects, everything was just broken. Here are some examples to illustrate: You get mass bull's strength at a level when you have everything +6 or better. You have airship buffs that work great at level 1 and do little at level 12. (with some exceptions). Damage effects never really did anything: Thorns did like what 1d6? Mobs have 10s of thousands of hit points. Fire guard, lightning guard, etc. Most of these we worthless.

Solution: The effects from the buffs should have been on a percentage rather than a flat rate. 30 fire resist was good fun at level 1; at level 28 it didn't help that much and with all the gear you have on, it probably didn't help at all. Now 30% fire resist would have scaled through from level 1-28 and all new content. Vampirism would take 1% of the damage done not 1hp (that one was so very stupid), Greensteel regen would give 1% HP back not 1 HP (1200 HP barbs, and 1 HP every 30 sec... think about that one....) Thorns would return a % of damage not 6 HP from their millions.... Spells like bull's strength and spell resist would have their own buff line. So you could take your +6 item, add +2 from ships, and add +4 from the spell buff. Now everyone will be happy that your wizard carries Mass Bear's Endurance. In fact, they will ask you for it each quest!

I hope you enjoyed!

Hey, Oceann, it's Radicaltop from Argo server. I thought you had come back awhile ago after "rage quitting."

[Syllph]

Hey Radical! No, I came back for about two days tested all the new content and got frustrated again. Yet another update where 90% of my gear was suddenly trash. The game used to be d&d where exploration was entertaining. When I left I felt like it was just another grind. Run some raid 20 times until you find an upgrade, then watch it get outdated. It became work more than a game.

[The_Human_Cypher]

Hey Radical! No, I came back for about two days tested all the new content and got frustrated again. Yet another update where 90% of my gear was suddenly trash. The game used to be d&d where exploration was entertaining. When I left I felt like it was just another grind. Run some raid 20 times until you find an upgrade, then watch it get outdated. It became work more than a game.

DDO will implement a level cap at the end of 2014 (Level 30) and this should help stabilize the game. The Level 30 cap is supposed to remain for the indefinite future, so this should help keep any gear that gets farmed for toons relevant.