Casualization at its peaks. What are your thoughts?

[Blackheartox]

(sorry for not being clear in opening as it was really late when i started this thread, my posts will slowly show what i initialy thought, best sumerized in post 19)

Whole epic lfm is full with mainly eh/en lfms.
First day and i alrdy dont like it.
Seed change backfired exactly as i thought it would. Might be to soon to make a conclusion. But currently it feels like this and it is going into this direction.
I mean everyone feels the same that now its a matter of efficiency to run lower difficulty.
Was this expected? Yes.
But do we really need to trivialize ddo so much?
Can we get at least some promise that running epic elite content will offer some reward that is actually worth it.

At least the ee/eh/en loot system. Something, anything, as i fear if the next update will have btaoa loot with same stats no matter the difficulty, there will be no real reason for the Epic elite setting.
I know, many will say do it for the challenge, but shouldnt challenge be somehow be rewarded?

Opinions welcome and i encourage people to discuss this, as i am highly interested what community thinks how ddo should be difficulty wise and what you think about current direction ddo is taking.

My opinion:
Personally, i dislike it as i am losing sight of running hardest content on hardest setting.
Any other mmo, has different values and loot system depending on what you run content on.
Higher tier difficulty = better rewards /titles/ladder boards.
Ddo should not be a exception in that regard and should reward higher skilled players with something to make them feel a sense of achievment and progress /for example loot titles/ theras encouraging everyone to get better.

[DirtySheepdip]

for a self proclaimed soloer, you seem to worry too much what other people are doing

[Blackheartox]

for a self proclaimed soloer, you seem to worry too much what other people are doing

Yes, since i dont want the game to take the direction of to many easy buttons as it is now i need to care about others opinions.
This is personal interest, as i want to have a challenge and fun while completing that challenge in next year, year after that.
And sadly devs have the opinion that most of us want ddo to be casualized.
I mainly want to see if this is common opinion, if people really want this and if they dont, then a mass opinion should reach even the devs that we would pay more money if the game was more oriented for challenge and more rewarding while completing those challenges.
Currently and i fear for the future there will be no real reason to run higher difficulties.
I mean, il play my own game like the whole time.
But it feels demoralizing that actually completing a higher challenge means apsolutely nothing. Even the selfachivment player will be converted to run lower tier for higher efficiency. I mainly dont want necro 4 for example to have same loot system as 3bc has. Keep the opinions coming

[TrinityTurtle]

I think casual players are customers too, and pay the same prices in either their money or their time grinding and deserve to enjoy the game in all it's aspects as well as the hard core players. And I think lfm's period are good for the game. And before the change, they were also filled with en/eh and it hasn't changed much. In fact, it might help the casual players be able to get the epic past life perks and improve their characters and give ee a try if they feel more confident in their characters. And if not, at least people are playing the game, and playing with each other.

[B0ltdrag0n]

Your OP is based on shaky and and full of faulty data and premises. Sorry Mr.Solo. Keep playing by yourself if you do not like the game.

[B0ltdrag0n]

Yes, since i dont want the game to take the direction of to many easy buttons as it is now i need to care about others opinions.
This is personal interest, as i want to have a challenge and fun while completing that challenge in next year, year after that.
And sadly devs have the opinion that most of us want ddo to be casualized.
I mainly want to see if this is common opinion, if people really want this and if they dont, then a mass opinion should reach even the devs that we would pay more money if the game was more oriented for challenge and more rewarding while completing those challenges.

Make.
Your.
Own.
Challenge.

[Sethvir]

tur.bine successfully removed any and all incentive to play ee, except for gh quests.

HONSTLY, whats the point in running anything at ee??? some extra xp? LOL!

And i DO care about how it affects others. Cos u know, i frigging miss those old days, when it was a thrill to run epics (i say epic, cos then there was no en, eh, ee). After intro of en/eh/ee AT LEAST SOME ee missions still did hold a tiny bit of thrill. but because of the friggin casualization of everything, ppl just dont care anymore about paying attention about how to do things, about putting in ANY effort. Ppl run arround with toons that could do ee totally easy with 2 ppl in grp, and friggin wait arround with 3 in grp cos grp is not full...
Right now i have the choice of taking 4 comms on ecasual or 2 seeds. LOL!???
And this will continue, the powercreep totally went overboard. I wholeheartly welcome the buffing of bards. GOSH they really did need it. but seriously!? Swashbuckling core2 PLUS exploitweak??? bards are now totally op.

But heh, im just an old geezer (DDO geezer). And if tur.bine is making money and ppl are happy (?) all is fine, isnt it?

[Blackheartox]

Your OP is based on shaky and and full of faulty data and premises. Sorry Mr.Solo. Keep playing by yourself if you do not like the game.

Please try to keep insults away, i dont attack anyone nor will i.
Im just asking, do you guys like that running epic elite is not rewarding enough, and do you support that direction the game is taking.
So lets keep it civil, solo players are also part of this community, they affect group players the least. So no reason to attack, ok?
Now that we got that out of the way, i want to hear opinions, not a attempt of provokation/trolling.

[blerkington]

Hi,

I think it would be commercially foolish to ignore the substantial market who are not power-gamers but want to play and will spend money doing it. Do you think the game could survive by catering primarily to power-gamers? I'm not so sure of that.

Your posts don't actually say anything about the difficulty of the game, which makes me think it's not the challenge you are really worried about. You can play EE all day long if you choose, solo or in group. If you were complaining about the game not being difficult enough your rationalisations would make more sense.

However, what you are complaining about is there no longer being tiered loot, or loot that is solely available from higher difficulty levels. I have mixed feelings about this issue, but I can see that it is quite separate from the issue of the amount of challenge available in the game. They are two quite different things.

Thanks.

[B0ltdrag0n]

tur.bine successfully removed any and all incentive to play ee, except for gh quests.

HONSTLY, whats the point in running anything at ee??? some extra xp? LOL!

If you do not find the game challenging make your own challenge. Or don't but the point of EE was originally, and somewhat still, to have a highest difficulty level. The fact that it is scaled poorly and makes only a handful of things really viable, and a larger majority ok to good at running them is something they've spoken about looking at someday.

when? Who knows. But the point is. If YOU find things too easy find a way to add your own challenge.

And i DO care about how it affects others. Cos u know, i frigging miss those old days, when it was a thrill to run epics (i say epic, cos then there was no en, eh, ee). After intro of en/eh/ee AT LEAST SOME ee missions still did hold a tiny bit of thrill. but because of the friggin casualization of everything, ppl just dont care anymore about paying attention about how to do things,

This is not any different than the game has been for 10 years. Not any different at all. If you do not experience the thrill or set goals for yourself to meet and for you to exceede and to challenge yourself...why should anyone else? People are not any worse than they were before or will be in the future. There are good people, there are bad ones. There are those who learn, those who try, and those who cannot learn. Its a game.

about putting in ANY effort. Ppl run arround with toons that could do ee totally easy with 2 ppl in grp, and friggin wait arround with 3 in grp cos grp is not full...

So you are mad that people want to include others in pugs even in EE so as to teach more people and help them become better at the game or even socialize? Hypocritical. This game would die without the sheer acts of kindness and inclusion I see everyday when I play. You are criticizing the best thing in the game...the people who are not jerks.

Right now i have the choice of taking 4 comms on ecasual or 2 seeds. LOL!???

No one is forcing you to run ecasual. In fact who cares about this at all? 21 (or slightly less depending on comms earlier) quests at CAP before a heart. They still ground 6 million xp. Running quests when already capped just to get more comms was a huge bummer if all you wanted was a TR.

And this will continue, the powercreep totally went overboard. I wholeheartly welcome the buffing of bards. GOSH they really did need it. but seriously!? Swashbuckling core2 PLUS exploitweak??? bards are now totally op.

Not worth dignifying.

But heh, im just an old geezer (DDO geezer). And if tur.bine is making money and ppl are happy (?) all is fine, isnt it?

For the most part. As long as there are still enough good people to outshine the bad ones so that new people are not turned away in droves and those willing to help people become better then yes...the game is fine. Once a threshold drops though...Well I think half the posts in this thread so far sum up the other types of players and we can all extrapolate what that would do

[DirtySheepdip]

would you prefer 0seeds for casual, 1 for norm, 2 for hard, 3 for elite?

i don't think casual should be giving any seeds...

[B0ltdrag0n]

Please try to keep insults away, i dont attack anyone nor will i.
Im just asking, do you guys like that running epic elite is not rewarding enough, and do you support that direction the game is taking.
So lets keep it civil, solo players are also part of this community, they affect group players the least. So no reason to attack, ok?
Now that we got that out of the way, i want to hear opinions, not a attempt of provokation/trolling.

I didn't attack you. You are a self proclaimed solo player, thats perfectly fine. I solo too on occasion. I refuted your initial arguments, and pointed out how they were founded on shaky grounds. That's how discussions work. With rebuttals and actual talking.

[Powskier]

I'd certainly try hittin more elites in epic ,if reward was there.I pulled a +4 tome from Von3 eh and a diff+4 in epic normal DA.Loot is random and dosent tier up for EE(except the rare drops u need to run50x to get)

[Blackheartox]

Hi,

I think it would be commercially foolish to ignore the substantial market who are not power-gamers but want to play and will spend money doing it. Do you think the game could survive by catering primarily to power-gamers? I'm not so sure of that.

Your posts don't actually say anything about the difficulty of the game, which makes me think it's not the challenge you are really worried about. You can play EE all day long if you choose, solo or in group. If you were complaining about the game not being difficult enough your rationalisations would make more sense.

However, what you are complaining about is there no longer being tiered loot, or loot that is solely available from higher difficulty levels. I have mixed feelings about this issue, but I can see that it is quite separate from the issue of the amount of challenge available in the game. They are two quite different things.

Thanks.

Yes, i think there is not enough challenge in ddo and that the difficulty currently isnt high. All they do is add couple 0s to mobs hp and saves and thats about it.
And if you attempt to do a challenge there is no proper reward after that.
Specificaly 3bc
Thing is, any mmo that offers a challenge also offers a proper reward tied to completing what you set as goal.
That is just how it is.
Ddo lacks that and i want to hear do people support that or no.

Ddo now, compared to pre motu times is easy. It wasnt hard back then, but it promoted more teamplay then now.
Even tho people say casuals are income, im pretty confident that powergamers spend more money overall and spent overall more then a 2 day per week player.
And its ok, doesnt matter who spent more, but question is specificaly for necro4.
Do you guys want it to drop regular items where you run it once and done like 3bc or the loot system like in gianthold.
I personally think ghold was the correct choice since i dont see myself running 3bc. And i love that pack but it has 0 replayability.

[Enoach]

Personally I think there is too little data right now to conclude that Heart Seeds at Cap for an end reward have caused players to turn to running EN/EH quests over EE

Why do I say this?

First, this feature has only been available for 8ish hours - hardly enough time to change everyone over from playing EE to lower difficulties

Second, even before this change a large population played at the EN/EH level for Efficiency and Speed. This was because they could run multiple quests over EE running and it would net them a larger return per minute on CoVs and XP. When your mindset is XP/Min or CoVs/Min the additional challenge of EE factors in and usually does not favor EE over EH (Exceptions do exist based on player/group structure)

Third, the advantage of Heart Seeds is only available to Level 28 characters. Now if your data included that all these LFMs were filled with Level 28 characters you might have a point, but I'm guessing that these LFMs were filled with a range of Epic Level Characters, with some LFMs not including Capped characters.

[Qezuzu]

How can you both be at the point where you're good enough for EE quests, and don't have any guildies/friends/channels to get EE runs going?

Like, me and my guildies just trio anything. We run EE not because there's a reward, but because we can, and EH is a complete snoozefest.

Just ****ing ignore the LFMs and do your own thing.

[Ayseifn]

Please try to keep insults away, i dont attack anyone nor will i.
Im just asking, do you guys like that running epic elite is not rewarding enough, and do you support that direction the game is taking.
So lets keep it civil, solo players are also part of this community, they affect group players the least. So no reason to attack, ok?
Now that we got that out of the way, i want to hear opinions, not a attempt of provokation/trolling.

This is a good change, eventually people that are good enough to run EEs without taking forever will have enough seeds stockpiled and never have to worry about them again. This change also helps melee toons with no caster gear get arcane lives without too much pain, or casters looking for a martial PL, etc.

GH, Shadowfell, Druids chain and High Road still all support EE pretty well IMO, I don't mind stuff like 3BC every now and then and greatly prefer it to new loot coming out every update that causes me to reconfigure because it's better than my old stuff. That gets tiring, I like going after new stuff sure but not having all that effort wasted when a new update drops 3 months later.

[blerkington]

Yes, i think there is not enough challenge in ddo and that the difficulty currently isnt high. All they do is add couple 0s to mobs hp and saves and thats about it.
And if you attempt to do a challenge there is no proper reward after that.
Specificaly 3bc
Thing is, any mmo that offers a challenge also offers a proper reward tied to completing what you set as goal.
That is just how it is.
Ddo lacks that and i want to hear do people support that or no.

Ddo now, compared to pre motu times is easy. It wasnt hard back then, but it promoted more teamplay then now.
Even tho people say casuals are income, im pretty confident that powergamers spend more money overall and spent overall more then a 2 day per week player.
And its ok, doesnt matter who spent more, but question is specificaly for necro4.
Do you guys want it to drop regular items where you run it once and done like 3bc or the loot system like in gianthold.
I personally think ghold was the correct choice since i dont see myself running 3bc. And i love that pack but it has 0 replayability.

Hi,

Well, better late than never.

I'm going to point out again that we are well into this thread now and this is pretty much the first thing you've said about the game's level of difficulty. It took some prompting from other posters, and it's definitely not what you were talking about when you started this thread.

As you play the game longer, learn it, get better at it, and get wealthier and better geared, it's bound to become easier for you. Assuming that the premise is that the game is going to be relatively easy to beat, which it is, for people with some ability and who make some effort. But that is another discussion.

If what is really worrying you is that you think you should have access to better loot, that is not available to everyone else, just come out and say it. I think there are some arguments for that, although like I said before, I'm not completely convinced either way.

I just think that this discussion would be more useful if you were more upfront about what it is you really want, why you want it, and what your argument is, if you have one, for what you want being a good idea. Shifting the focus of the discussion around just muddies the water and makes it hard to get anywhere with it.

Thanks.

[Blackheartox]

Hi,

Well, better late than never.

I'm going to point out again that we are well into this thread now and this is pretty much the first thing you've said about the game's level of difficulty. It took some prompting from other posters, and it's definitely not what you were talking about when you started this thread.

As you play the game longer, learn it, get better at it, and get wealthier and better geared, it's bound to become easier for you. Assuming that the premise is that the game is going to be relatively easy to beat, which it is, for people with some ability and who make some effort. But that is another discussion.

If what is really worrying you is that you think you should have access to better loot, that is not available to everyone else, just come out and say it. I think there are some arguments for that, although like I said before, I'm not completely convinced either way.

I just think that this discussion would be more useful if you were more upfront about what it is you really want, why you want it, and what your argument is, if you have one, for what you want being a good idea. Shifting the focus of the discussion around just muddies the water and makes it hard to get anywhere with it.

Thanks.

No no dont take it wrong, i dont want personally to have "better gear" then others.
I want higher difficulties to be more difficult and to provide proper reward for it.
Even if im unable to complete it myself, i just want to be sure that there wil be a reward for higher and more difficult content so that i can work on improving myself to be able to get that reward.

Focus from seeds, from observing lfm today made players shift to high xp/min quest while not turning them in and completing mutliple quests on lower difficulty while turning in once they cap.
Commendation of valor mechanics before this change rewarded players who did all quests on ee and did ee higher tier quests underlevel so that they could collect a epic heart pre cap.

Now, efficiency wise that is not the case, and as efficiency wise there is no reason to run epic elite, we are left with loot, and 3bc showed what they did regarding that..
Initialy i asked myself this: If they will continue with 3bc loot mechanics, is there any point to ee content at all?

[Qhualor]

I think casual players are customers too, and pay the same prices in either their money or their time grinding and deserve to enjoy the game in all it's aspects as well as the hard core players. And I think lfm's period are good for the game. And before the change, they were also filled with en/eh and it hasn't changed much. In fact, it might help the casual players be able to get the epic past life perks and improve their characters and give ee a try if they feel more confident in their characters. And if not, at least people are playing the game, and playing with each other.

I agree on the casual side of it, but the incentive is once again watered down. I don't usually agree with the OP, but in this case he does or will have a point. Turbine went from one extreme to another, which is done in typical Turbine fashion. nobody asked for something like 42 heart seeds in end rewards on any difficulty. many just asked for the 4200 to be reduced to something more reasonable.

Personally I think there is too little data right now to conclude that Heart Seeds at Cap for an end reward have caused players to turn to running EN/EH quests over EE

Why do I say this?

First, this feature has only been available for 8ish hours - hardly enough time to change everyone over from playing EE to lower difficulties

Second, even before this change a large population played at the EN/EH level for Efficiency and Speed. This was because they could run multiple quests over EE running and it would net them a larger return per minute on CoVs and XP. When your mindset is XP/Min or CoVs/Min the additional challenge of EE factors in and usually does not favor EE over EH (Exceptions do exist based on player/group structure)

Third, the advantage of Heart Seeds is only available to Level 28 characters. Now if your data included that all these LFMs were filled with Level 28 characters you might have a point, but I'm guessing that these LFMs were filled with a range of Epic Level Characters, with some LFMs not including Capped characters.

I agree its too early to tell just yet. I just looked at the lfm on Khyber and there is only 1 EE, 1 is slayer and one says nothing and this is primetime. time will tell, but when it comes to incentive, the path to least resistance is usually the favorite choice.

there was before this change a large population that ran EH for efficiency, but also because of off destinies and not a lot of players like to pug EEs. I did see a lot of EE lfms and those were mostly players that could handle the difficulty and some were because of the hard to reach 4200 knowing full well that EE pays out better. those who cared about xp didn't care about Comms because they already had enough, were buying them from the store or weren't planning to immediately reincarnate at 28. if they did care about Comms than they weren't running daily Von 3s on EH.