Three tiny changes.

[droid327]

You are incorrect Sir.

Loot Gen currently has the best numbers in the game, and since worn slots have have dual colors, that means you have 4 ability Loot-gen, still dropping today, which makes it better then pretty much all your named gear in the epic game, and, even level 16 Loot Gen weapons have a better damage profile then Heroic Level Raid gear.

Sure, a lot of loot-gen goes to the vendor, not because it is worse then named, but because there are better loot-gen combos that are more sought after.

Depends if you're talking endgame or not, and if not, what level range you're talking about. Yes, lootgen has eclipsed many older named items that have not been updated and have fallen victim to power creep in the years since they were first released. However, by Epic, lootgen returns to its "proper" place underneath named items, even easily-acquired ones like ES comm gear and TF.

For non-endgame items, ones that you only use for a certain level range then outgrow, its harder to balance game design. Lootgen is easily acquired (though good combinations are still rare), but named items can still require a great deal of grinding. If a named item is markedly better than lootgen, its probably going to be more difficult to acquire, and most players will simply skip the hassle and just stick with the slighty worse but still perfectly adequate lootgen until they can use a better item at some higher level. Conversely, if you make named items both awesome *and* easily acquired, you're just perpetutating power creep and further trivializing non-endgame questing.

Its a very hard balance to strike, because players are much less willing to invest time and effort for an item that's ultimately disposable, but its that time and effort that makes it warranted to add really nice named items.

[Ungood]

Depends if you're talking endgame or not, and if not, what level range you're talking about. Yes, lootgen has eclipsed many older named items that have not been updated and have fallen victim to power creep in the years since they were first released. However, by Epic, lootgen returns to its "proper" place underneath named items, even easily-acquired ones like ES comm gear and TF.

No way. By level 28, when you would be using Thunder Forged, if you wanted the best stat items in the game, you are already outfitted in Loot-Gen save maybe a few items. Simply put, Loot gen eclipses all the previous gear you will have obtained, and will remain BiS, unless Turbine starts to put out a lot more "raid" gear at the end game.

For non-endgame items, ones that you only use for a certain level range then outgrow, its harder to balance game design. Lootgen is easily acquired (though good combinations are still rare), but named items can still require a great deal of grinding. If a named item is markedly better than lootgen, its probably going to be more difficult to acquire, and most players will simply skip the hassle and just stick with the slighty worse but still perfectly adequate lootgen until they can use a better item at some higher level. Conversely, if you make named items both awesome *and* easily acquired, you're just perpetutating power creep and further trivializing non-endgame questing.

Its a very hard balance to strike, because players are much less willing to invest time and effort for an item that's ultimately disposable, but its that time and effort that makes it warranted to add really nice named items.

Or they could have made the decision to not revamp Loot-gen as the existing system was well balanced to begin with. The decision to revamp Loot-gen was a deliberate one and one they knew would destroy the value of named and raid gear in the heroic levels. They had a working balanced system, they chose to put in the time and effort to destroy that balance.

[Douglas21]

No way. By level 28, when you would be using Thunder Forged, if you wanted the best stat items in the game, you are already outfitted in Loot-Gen save maybe a few items. Simply put, Loot gen eclipses all the previous gear you will have obtained, and will remain BiS, unless Turbine starts to put out a lot more "raid" gear at the end game.

All right, I'll bite. What is this miraculous lootgen that would be an upgrade on the following gear my level 28 character is wearing:
Green Steel Goggles (45 hp, displacement clicky, smoke screen, and skill bonuses I don't particularly care about)
Battlerager's Harness
Adamantine Cloak of the Bear (mainly for the trip DC)
Orcish Privateer Boots
Nether Grasps
Necklace of Mystic Eidolons
Seal of House Dun'Robar (insight str and trip)
Epic Treasure Hunter's Spyglass tier 3
Purple Dragon Shield
Flawless Shadow Guardian Full Plate

If I didn't have Greater Convalescent Bracers of Superior Parrying (which are no longer generated), that slot would have Dumathoin's Bracers.

I'll grant you the Ring of Accuracy in my other ring slot, but that's the only present-day lootgen item I have equipped.

Sure, top-end lootgen might give bonuses a tiny bit higher to some things, but at the cost of losing one or even more entire other bonuses, some of which aren't available on lootgen at all.

[Ungood]

All right, I'll bite. What is this miraculous lootgen that would be an upgrade on the following gear my level 28 character is wearing:

Green Steel Goggles (45 hp, displacement clicky, smoke screen, and skill bonuses I don't particularly care about)

I have Deadly 10 Goggles of the Archmagi, with dual slots, that I have Toughness and GoM in.

Sure, top-end lootgen might give bonuses a tiny bit higher to some things, but at the cost of losing one or even more entire other bonuses, some of which aren't available on lootgen at all.

I could list more ways to upgrade your gear and optimize your numbers, but you asked me where you are lacking, and that was the first item on your list.

I mean, for example, the Orc Boots are nice, but really, Fire resist, FoM, and Speed, all handy, but unless you plan to get set aflame a lot or have a very poor will save and get held a lot and need the FoM, they are not much, I mean Str 10 Boots of Speed VII would do you better for most dungeon runs.

I don't know about you, but I use haste pots for fighting, so the Speed is just for the 30% Striding to me, imho, the "speed" effect was just an annoyance that made striding items outdated as far as I loot at them.

But, Sure, you can get a few extra effects on your named loot, but that only matters if those effects matter.

[Douglas21]

Deadly 10? My Dragon Masque (which I somehow missed listing, sorry) has Deadly 11. Archmagi? 250 spell point yellow augment. Toughness? 20 hp is less than 45, and I can slot it in one of the numerous augment slots on my other gear if really needed. Gift of the Master? I'm level 28, I already have all the experience I need, and if I didn't I have augment slots elsewhere. And then there's the permanent blur and displacement clicky, which I'm pretty sure no lootgen has ever had, and don't try to tell me those aren't important unless there's a point past which every random mob in the game has True Seeing.

Str 10 I'll grant is better than what I have, but only because augments don't go above 8. Those extra 2 points of strength would get me +1 attack and +1 damage. Nice, but not huge. Meanwhile, FoM gives me immunity to a number of things that don't offer saves in the first place, guarantees even a nat 1 won't get me held, realistically probably does a fair bit more because I don't have paladin saves, 30% fire absorb is very nice in the rather large number of quests where enemies use fire against you (especially Fire on Thunder Peak), and it has an augment slot.

Yes, haste pots are better than Speed X, and if I really want to maximize my combat power I should use them, but they're annoying to have to keep paying attention to and refreshing with their 30 second duration and the extra margin isn't all that big. Even if I did start using them a lot, Speed X is a good fallback in case of dispel or forgetting to renew in time.

[Ungood]

Deadly 10? My Dragon Masque (which I somehow missed listing, sorry) has Deadly 11. Archmagi? 250 spell point yellow augment. Toughness? 20 hp is less than 45, and I can slot it in one of the numerous augment slots on my other gear if really needed. Gift of the Master? I'm level 28, I already have all the experience I need, and if I didn't I have augment slots elsewhere. And then there's the permanent blur and displacement clicky, which I'm pretty sure no lootgen has ever had, and don't try to tell me those aren't important unless there's a point past which every random mob in the game has True Seeing.

Str 10 I'll grant is better than what I have, but only because augments don't go above 8. Those extra 2 points of strength would get me +1 attack and +1 damage. Nice, but not huge. Meanwhile, FoM gives me immunity to a number of things that don't offer saves in the first place, guarantees even a nat 1 won't get me held, realistically probably does a fair bit more because I don't have paladin saves, 30% fire absorb is very nice in the rather large number of quests where enemies use fire against you (especially Fire on Thunder Peak), and it has an augment slot.

Yes, haste pots are better than Speed X, and if I really want to maximize my combat power I should use them, but they're annoying to have to keep paying attention to and refreshing with their 30 second duration and the extra margin isn't all that big. Even if I did start using them a lot, Speed X is a good fallback in case of dispel or forgetting to renew in time.

Since you listed your gear, I suspect that you are very proud if it, and this response confirms that, no doubt you put a lot of time and effort into it, in that front, You're gear is fine, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with it, but the current greatest tragedy of the game is that you could optimize better with Loot-gen and that is a downright shame.

The main problem here is that with Loot gen, you could get +10 to all your stats, as well as a base +10 saves, +15 saves to areas you might need the most help. Since all Loot-gen can have at least one Slot and a lot of it can be dual slot, there is no shortage of additional abilities anyone can keep adding to your gear to optimize it. I mean when you can have 10 yellow, 10 Colorless (Dual Slot Rings, Belt, Helm, Goggles gives you 10, that way you can keep using a named Trinket,Cloak, Necklace, and your old Loot-gen Bracers), you can pretty much put in whatever you want. It would be little effort from that point to have 250 Base SP and 40 to all Resists and still have 5 slots open for named Augments or add in things like Deathblock, Underwater Action, Fear and Blindness Immunity, Etc, you have have a lot of Options at this point. Mix that with the colorless augments and you suddenly have +8 to all stats that you did not want a +10 in, and +15 to whatever skills you need the most, since you have abundant slots you can toss in some +2 Insight Augments for when you want that bit more, suddenly Loot-Gen is rocking some serious bonuses there. It's some scary stuff on how much power you can pack into Loot-Gen these days at the end game, and lets be real here, that is not how things should be in this game.

[Waaye]

Waaye,I agree with you that some of the named items seem a little "tame,"

Thanks for sharing your insights Asurax2001.

The three items I mentioned in the first post were not only "tame" but virtually unusable because the items my character already had were noticably better. My L12 lootgen bow was terrific at L12 but it lacks stopping-power in some of the L16 quests. To compensate for this lack of power I have been taking a regular hireling and one or two Gold Seal hirelings along in some of the harder quests. To continue playing it seems I have no choice but to buy increasing numbers of Gold Seal hireling contracts because I am too slow to group and can't find better gear. That is too bad because I was saving the TP I purchased for significant game content and not a bunch of one-hour Gold Seal hireling contracts. Better gear would reduce the number of contracts I need to buy for real money and then I could afford to play more often.

[...]I can see the point of people who claim that some of them are being revamped as specific quests are updated. (Personally I would love to see Cannith Crafting get an overhaul even more than named loot in general.)

Revamping things will take time but making tiny changes to existing items now should be quick and easy. There is no reason that the items I mentioned could not be changed right away and the revamping of the entire quest done later. The second does not prevent the first and some tiny changes now might encourage more newcomers to continue playing until they reach level 20 when better gear is available.

However, I'd like to offer you a "plot recommendation" with respect to your strict alignment role-playing,

My characters always adhere to the alignment scheme that was in place when I started playing; Law, Neutrality, and Chaos. In those days Law and Chaos were not opposites but compliments. Entities taking a Law stance would work together for the common good but Chaos entities could not be trusted to cooperate with anyone including other Chaos entities. Alignments were often only known to the referees for gameplay purposes and sometimes players had no easy way to know if a Minotaur followed Neutrality or Chaos before interacting with them. Even if a monster did have a Chaos alignment they still could not be assumed to be part of some sort of army of evil minions to be attacked on sight.

I think you're missing an opportunity with Attack on Stormreach, especially since you've already spent money on it.

Today's alignments are more complex than before but the new is derived from the old. Stoning an innocent minotaur to "Frame" an ambassador would be a Chaotic crime whether the victim dies or not. Killing the minotaur Chieftan without provication in his own village is an Evil act akin to murder. Even if the quest were rewritten to eliminate the crimes I still wouldn't want the bow because it looks like it is too weak for its level.

Here is the "internal" storyline I made up for my own character, after playing through "Frame Work" as a Bladeforged Paladin.

That is a great story. It is well written, interesting, and enjoyable. Thanks for posting it.

But the idea behind not acting like an assassin or framing someone else for your actions is still equally valid.

In many modern computer games if alignment exists it is often cosmetic. That does not mean, however, that my characters cannot act in accordance with their alignment even if the game allows characters to get away with murder.

[Kaiserkreuz]

Guess Turbine is very lazy on updating and standardizing named loots in having increased damage class and augment slot or any update on them. They did update some named loots from certain quests and ad pack way back in Update 17 http://ddowiki.com/page/Update_17_named_items and thought back then they would update all named loot accordingly. But after like 6 updates still no changes to some named loots in getting improvements and augment slots in certain adventure packs people pay to get some ad packs or be in VIP so at least they should accordingly do some updates and improvement since some packs are left to be obsolete and forgotten. Some people just don't run quest for ex anyway.

Turbine releasing always something new without even trying to update the old ones accordingly and always get the feeling why do even bother trying to wish for them to improve things since they won't even do a thing about it.

[Waaye]

[...]Turbine releasing always something new without even trying to update the old ones accordingly and always get the feeling why do even bother trying to wish for them to improve things since they won't even do a thing about it.

Well, Kaiserkreuz, Turbine does need to continously add new content to keep their subscribers interested. That must be consuming the majority of the man-hours they have available. Retaining subscribers, however, will not be enough and they must also attract and retain new players. Improving some of the L14 to L19 gear should help with that. The best we can do is make suggestions and hope that some of them are adopted.

[Ungood]

Well, Kaiserkreuz, Turbine does need to continously add new content to keep their subscribers interested. That must be consuming the majority of the man-hours they have available. Retaining subscribers, however, will not be enough and they must also attract and retain new players. Improving some of the L14 to L19 gear should help with that. The best we can do is make suggestions and hope that some of them are adopted.

Some of those "Updates" however were not improvements. In many cases they raised the ML of the item and this made is less attractive, a lot of named gear is attractive due to it's low ML as well, and in a game like DDO with such a large TR aspect in it, a low ML makes gear very attractive.

[Waaye]

Some of those "Updates" however were not improvements. In many cases they raised the ML of the item and this made is less attractive,

Well, Ungood, the raised ML did affect me directly. Back when my Ranger was L7 he carried Giant's Roar as his main bow. It was a great bow but there was the occasional mob it was weak against. At that point I decided to go questing for the L6 Silver Longbow. It was hard to get and my character died more times than he succeeded but he eventually obtained the shiny new bow. Imagine my shock when my L7 character could not equip the L8 bow! After frantically searching my keyboard for a "do it anyway" key I came to understand they had raised the ML of the bow and I had to wait a level to use it.

[,,,]a lot of named gear is attractive due to it's low ML as well, and in a game like DDO with such a large TR aspect in it, a low ML makes gear very attractive.

My Ranger is my first character and I am still doing the quests for the first time. So far, I have not TRed or played much with alternate characters. My suggested improvements to gear were to assist newcomers in making it to the end-game where they can TR, level alts, and all those things. A significant proportion of players that joined when DDO went F2P did not make it past L14. Mediocre mid-game gear seems to have contributed to the exodus.

Changing Dragontouched to actually have the continuous Deathward the rune indicates would help new players survive the mid-game quests and make it to the end-game. Altering the Earth bow to 1.50 [1d8] and changing the protection to DRX /- would do the same for Rangers. [Elemental themed protection makes sense for defensive items like armor but not so much for offensive items like weapons. It is hard to imagine a circumstance when protection from the weapon's own primary element would be useful. Think about it.]