Producer's Letter

[Cordovan]

Yes, I am hoping for a new volume of the Monster Manual in 2015.

New Monster Manuals are something we are exploring as well for 2015.

[kmankowski]

New Monster Manuals are something we are exploring as well for 2015.

Best news ever.

[The_Human_Cypher]

New Monster Manuals are something we are exploring as well for 2015.

Great! Thank you, Cordovan.

[GoldyGopher]

Greetings,

My name is Robert Ciccolini, although many of you might know me as “Severlin” on the forums or from podcasts. I am the The latest if you keep track of them as they go by Executive Producer for Dungeons and Dragons Online. I wanted to take this opportunity to look back on our previous year and look forward to the year ahead.

Fixed it for you. Congratulations on your promotion by the way, hopefully it goes well.

The last year has been eventful, and looking back we have seen many additions to the game.

In the last year we added lots of new content including three new raids. Our characters were able to explore the Haunted Halls as we had the opportunity to present that classic adventure to our players.

This not lots of new content, this is actually more like the complete opposite of lots and that is the problem from this player's perspective.
Don't get me wrong I love Thunderholme, enjoy the concepts of the new raids but they are not really playable at the moment.
The Haunted Halls of Eveningstar is awesome content and I look forward to The Temple of Elemental Evil and I hope it is half as good as Haunted Halls.
The other new content was a new quest for Epic 3BC; Precious Cargo.

Player were able to band together to form more powerful guilds and update their guild airships and amenities.

From my perspective you fixed a problem that didn't need to be fixed and escalated power creep in the game. A few changes to the existing ship buffs and everyone would have been happy.

High level adventurers were able to experience more powerful versions of some of some well known heroic content. We revisited both Three Barrel Cove and the most powerful area of the Orchard of the Macabre.

Yeah about that, please stop doing that. People want new content not a rehashing of older content.
IMHO all the content that has both Epic and Heroic Versions should become one or the other and the other version shut off.

Should be kept:

• Heroic Phairlan Carnival
• Heroic 3BC
• Heroic Red Fens
• Heroic Sentinels of Stormreach
• Heroic Demon Sands
• Heroic Gianthold
• Heroic Wheloon
• Heroic Litany of the Dead
• Heroic Secrets of the Storm Horns
• Heroic Heart of Madness
• Epic Vault of Night (The Raid needs to be level 32 though)
• Epic Druids Deep (Needs an explorer area though)
• Epic High Road of Shadow

The other version of each of those needs to be reimagined into new adventure packs with new content. We can only take running the Gateway to Khyber soooooooo many times.

This past year has seen changes that have allowed for powerful new builds. Heavy armor is no longer relegated to niche builds and has instead taken its place on the front line of the fight. The year saw large improvements for Bard, Paladin and Barbarian, as well as a few improvements for Ranger and Rogue. We added a new Bard tree with Swashbuckler, and the new Vanguard tree is now available to Fighter and Paladin. We also added the Harper Agent enhancement tree. This year also saw changes to help some heroic abilities scale into Epic levels, and a rebalance of the melee oriented Epic Enhancement trees.

The improvements to most classes players feel are a mixed bag. There is a reason people call it Brokbarian, and Pally still needs lots of love as you have shoehorned those characters into heavy armor. Vanguard is well not well liked.

The Mirror of Glamering was created to give players the freedom and flexibility to capture the look of their favorite weapons and armors from the game’s treasure. We have already seen players scouring the game for their favorite items to update their style.

Of all the stuff you have done well last year this is my personal favorite addition to the game. I think I bought like 20 Mirror of Glamerings from the store and am ready to buy more when I find graphics I like. I have kept 5 sets of older armor for eight years waiting for this addition. Not to mention a Maelstrom for my Dwarven Barbarian who looks great.

Players in hard and elite content faced a new challenge in the form of Monster Champions.

As excited as we are about the additions to the game, the true joy of working on our game has been the involvement of the community. The feedback on features and additions has been extremely helpful. Our players are a passionate bunch who clearly love the game as much as we do, and we love reading feedback, hearing what you love about the game, watching your videos, answering questions during live casts, and hearing stories about your in game adventures.

In the last year we have had some great people provide terrific feedback on the player’s council. I wanted to give those players a shout out for all of their time and enthusiasm. We are working hard on creating our player council for the coming year and we are both excited to hear some new voices and sad to see the current players pass the proverbial baton to the new guard.
Looking forward to the new year we have lots of exciting plans to share.

Unfortunately the Players Council was no where near as transparent as it originally was indicated.

Temple of Elemental Evil
Our next big update will include the Temple of Elemental Evil. We are all excited to present this classic dungeon to the players. The Temple grounds are quite large! Although players will be presented with a quest to accomplish when they enter the temple, there will be many dangers and treasures to find if the players take the time to properly explore the vast network of temple halls and chambers.

While it may not be the The Isle of Dread it is still a really cool module and I am glad that you are bringing it to DDO, it will be interesting to see how it works considering you have indicated that the adventure will take place in another world (cough Greyhawk cough) without as far as I know saying what world it is. It is too bad you did not build a public zone and the adventure area to go with it that would have been beyond awesome.
I also hope that when you say “will include” you mean there will be an additional adventure pack in the update. Not just ToEE and some game updates.

Monster Champions and Mysterious Fragments
Characters facing the game’s toughest challenges have encountered a wide variety of Monster Champions - creatures that have increased skill and power. What is causing this increase in power? As characters investigate the source of this newfound strength they will begin to discover that many of these creatures carry Mysterious Fragments that seem to resonate with strange magical power. Could these fragments be causing these champions and their rise in power? What use could these fragments have for those looking for power?

Monster champions will have a chance to drop Mysterious Fragments. Players can gather these fragments and various agents and interested parties might trade them for a variety of rewards. Rumors of groups offering scrolls, potions, cosmetic items, and even prestigious and rare pets have begun to surface. Organizations do not have unlimited resources. As factions vie for power some agents and rewards might change as the year progresses.

Please no, not another collectable. Don't we have enough of these already with Tokens, Commendations, and ingredients and collectables? People don't want this they want a simple system that rewards them (cough XP cough) for fighting champions, not collecting 3500 Mysterious Fragments with a 101 items on the reward list where only 1 is really taken by the players.

Warlock
We are looking into adding a new class during the year, and we are considering the Warlock class. The Warlock creates powerful eldritch blasts to destroy enemies in addition to a variety of spells to aid them in their adventures.

I had to laugh out loud on this one. I wrote a post yesterday that disappeared shortly after I wrote it which included a section on why Warlock would be a good edition to DDO this year?

New Storylines
The game will introduce a new story arc that will take the players to Shavarath for a new adventure pack. Characters on these adventures will work to prevent a catastrophe. That story will continue as the year progresses to bring the players once again to the Vale of Twilight. New threats have entered the Vale and more powerful challenges await in this chapter of the Vale of Twilight’s history. Defeating this new threat will require you to enter the more dangerous and powerful Vale of Twilight as you increase your level to 30 and obtain new treasures. More powerful items also await from the corrupted Greensteel found in the Vale after recent events have increased the magical power of the area.

It will be nice to go back to Shavarath, with the Angels and Demon areas yet to explore it could be very interesting. Hopefully this (these) new pack is the similar level range as Devil's of Shavarath (19-20) or more honestly you rework Devil’s of Shavarath to be level 30 content and make the new content level 30 as well. When Devil’s of Shavarath was added to the game it was the most difficult content and made the most sense but as the Epic levels to the game have come it makes less sense that the most difficult zone in Eberron is not the Battleground of Shavarath.

Now about Epic Vale, please don't. Let me rephrase that, are you out of your trees, do you not listen to people who do the exit surveys, how about listening to players that take hiatuses. I am not going to sugar coat this Epicifying existing content is beyond dumb and borderline stupid. Not even lag has driven away that many players as the sure boredom of rerunning older content. Players want NEW content not rehashed version of the same things we already have. You wrote about how you can analyze big data to tell you what players are doing, how many runs of Epic 3BC, Heroic Druids Deep, Wheloon (either version), heroic Secrets of the Storm Horns.
Yes players would like to have Epic Green Steel Crafting (or something similar), heck most players would want Epic Crafting that crossed multiple Adventure Packs, but rerunning the same quests over and over and over and over again is not fun. So let me repeat, Epic Green Steel Crafting good - Epic Let Sleeping Dust Lie not good.

Level 30
Characters will be able to gain experience to increase their level to 30. Characters who reach this milestone will gain additional feats and power, and they will be able to wield and even construct new weapons and treasures to face the foes that challenge them.

Another Epic feat at 30, gotcha.
Additional powers…. Hum worried this may be too much power creep.

New Festivals
The coming year will bring new festivals; a mimic event where players have to hunt down mimics that have infested all the corners of the land. The autumn will also bring a new seasonal festival that will haunt your favorite places and provide characters with more treats than tricks.

The question is do we get rid of the Blue Snow in Eveningstar. It hurt the eyes.

These are just some of the ideas and plans we are looking into for the next year. We don’t want to spoil too much about our new monsters, new treasures and other goodies we have planned. Our goal is to present players with a taste of the ideas we are working on, and we also want to remain vigilant to the requests and feedback from the players. Your ideas are important to us, and your feedback will help guide us over the course of the year.

Robert “Severlin” Ciccolini

How about new races, Dragonborn for example.
Dragonborn make a lot of sense from a storyline situation, with them being early inhabitants from Abeir (Toril’s long lost Twin Planet) on Faerûn and in Eberron where they are the descendants of Dragons living in Argonessen.

You have expressed the problems concerning Tieflings reworking Helmets, why not take the same approach that you did with Docents and Warforged and have Tiefling only Helmets?

What about a new starting zone?

How about an Expansion for the 10th Anniversary?

Would you spend some money to make all the Epic Raids reworked to be level 32?

[deconedi]

I say this to be applied generally, as a non-fanboi-of-tieflings:

Don't worry so much about cosmetics.

Nobody is really going to care about not having a tail, and it is perfectly fine for helms to fully hide horns (a player can just turn off helmet display if they'd rather see their horns).

This is a game fueled by build options, don't sacrifice more depth for lack of visuals.

I do not see difficulties, the succubus has a tail so I think the animation could be used. As already mentioned a player can just turn off helmet display if they'd rather see their horns.

[cdbd3rd]

...

Please do not turn them into half-elves it hurts me that I can make a more attractive half-orc female than a half-elf.

You say that like it's a BAD thing...

New Monster Manuals are something we are exploring as well for 2015.

Oh, hells yes!

[FranOhmsford]

New Monster Manuals are something we are exploring as well for 2015.

Thank Goodness!

Here's the list of must sees in the next MM update:

Gnolls
Drow
Wights
Mummies
Yuan-Ti
Dogs
Hyenas
Fire Giants
Ogres
Bearded Devils

[Loromir]

Fixed it for you. Congratulations on your promotion by the way, hopefully it goes well.



This not lots of new content, this is actually more like the complete opposite of lots and that is the problem from this player's perspective.
Don't get me wrong I love Thunderholme, enjoy the concepts of the new raids but they are not really playable at the moment.
The Haunted Halls of Eveningstar is awesome content and I look forward to The Temple of Elemental Evil and I hope it is half as good as Haunted Halls.
The other new content was a new quest for Epic 3BC; Precious Cargo.


From my perspective you fixed a problem that didn't need to be fixed and escalated power creep in the game. A few changes to the existing ship buffs and everyone would have been happy.


Yeah about that, please stop doing that. People want new content not a rehashing of older content.
IMHO all the content that has both Epic and Heroic Versions should become one or the other and the other version shut off.

Should be kept:

• Heroic Phairlan Carnival
• Heroic 3BC
• Heroic Red Fens
• Heroic Sentinels of Stormreach
• Heroic Demon Sands
• Heroic Gianthold
• Heroic Wheloon
• Heroic Litany of the Dead
• Heroic Secrets of the Storm Horns
• Heroic Heart of Madness
• Epic Vault of Night (The Raid needs to be level 32 though)
• Epic Druids Deep (Needs an explorer area though)
• Epic High Road of Shadow

No...I wholeheartedly disagree. DDO is currently run by a skeleton crew at turbine as it is. I actually advocate just the opposite. I suggest they give us epic versions of ALL heroic content...and vice versa....Heroic versions of ALL epic content.

We need more content at all levels, and if they have to recycle content to give us that...then so be it.

They just don't have the staff to completely start from scratch and still deliver enough content.

[GoldyGopher]

No...I wholeheartedly disagree. DDO is currently run by a skeleton crew at turbine as it is. I actually advocate just the opposite. I suggest they give us epic versions of ALL heroic content...and vice versa....Heroic versions of ALL epic content.

We need more content at all levels, and if they have to recycle content to give us that...then so be it.

They just don't have the staff to completely start from scratch and still deliver enough content.

The reason they have a skeleton crew is because they haven't given players enough content to stick around, In my guild these players come back about once a year and check for new content, play it a few times and leave. As often as I have heard DDO still needs new content it make me very upset.
As for delivering with a skeleton crew Epic 3BC is a great example, according to a former Franchise Director it cost almost as much to create an Epic Version of the existing 3BC as it would have to create a whole new adventure pack, if that is the case why not spend the few dollars more to create the new content?

[FranOhmsford]

Yeah about that, please stop doing that. People want new content not a rehashing of older content.
IMHO all the content that has both Epic and Heroic Versions should become one or the other and the other version shut off.

Should be kept:

• Heroic Phairlan Carnival
• Heroic 3BC
• Heroic Red Fens
• Heroic Sentinels of Stormreach
• Heroic Demon Sands
• Heroic Gianthold
• Heroic Wheloon
• Heroic Litany of the Dead
• Heroic Secrets of the Storm Horns
• Heroic Heart of Madness
• Epic Vault of Night (The Raid needs to be level 32 though)
• Epic Druids Deep (Needs an explorer area though)
• Epic High Road of Shadow

The other version of each of those needs to be reimagined into new adventure packs with new content. We can only take running the Gateway to Khyber soooooooo many times.

I too feel that some Heroic/Epic packs should be set in just one but my list would be very different from yours...

Epic Carnival {Seriously - This pack has never fitted in at Lvl 5!}

Heroic High Road and Druid's Deep - Neither of these packs scream Epic - In fact the Heroic Versions could do with being reduced by at least 5 levels!

Epic 3BC has been done well and is different to Heroic - BOTH should stay!

E-GH was done badly apart from Fall of Truth itself - BUT unless we get like 10 NEW quests to replace them we need to keep the Epic versions.
Same for E-Orchard.

Vault of Night - The only reason to keep this Epic is because of the XP - Taking away the Heroic version would cause players to leave in their droves though!
Taking away E-Wiz King would probably cause quite a bit of anguish too!

Fens/Sentinels/Storm Horns and Heart of Madness I actually agree on.

[nibel]

New Monster Manuals are something we are exploring as well for 2015.

[Oliphant]

Personally, I'm ok with epic versions of heroics and I really enjoyed E3BC. I think the changes to the monsters, quest plots and sometimes the pathing combined with the differences between players' heroic and epic selves provide an interesting contrast and the re-use of settings to tell continuing stories is perfectly natural. I also really appreciate being given free content updates for packs I bought years ago, although that doesn't mean as much if you're vip I guess.

[Vooduspyce]

“Is this the Sentinent weapon that was talked about?”


Here is the honest reason I didn’t mention Sentient Weapons. Our plan is to include them in the new Greensteel, because we don’t want to release a system and have Greensteel overshadow it, and we also don’t want to release Greensteel and have Sentient Weapons make those obsolete. So far we have been unhappy with our designs to include Sentient Weapons with Greensteel because, as most players know Greensteel was an awesome system. Because that design is still very much in the air I didn’t want to include Sentient Weapons in the producer’s letter.

Please consider this suggestion for epic greensteel https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...ic-Green-Steel

“Epic vale quests again...”


Our current plan is to redo the Vale quests, and keep the raid mechanics mostly intact with a new encounter at the end. Some of the Vale quests really need to be revamped.

I love the idea of having a 6th new part to shroud for epic. I had always hoped it would be something that bridged the story gap between the end of shroud and the beginning of TOD. Follow Harry to his lair in shavarath and subdue him there where he is more powerful and has lots of lieutenants?

Looking forward to it all!

[Keladon]

Personally, I'm ok with epic versions of heroics and I really enjoyed E3BC. I think the changes to the monsters, quest plots and sometimes the pathing combined with the differences between players' heroic and epic selves provide an interesting contrast and the re-use of settings to tell continuing stories is perfectly natural. I also really appreciate being given free content updates for packs I bought years ago, although that doesn't mean as much if you're vip I guess.

I'm VIP and I have to admit, I like it too. Sure you can argue that it's reused content, but what if I like that content?

I have no idea how much content they can put out, but if it's either an epic version of an existing pack or nothing.. I know which one I want.
(Based on an educated guess that it would be less work to create an epic version of something than building new epic quests from scratch)

And you mentioned multiple good reasons as to why the heroic and epic version can still be totally different experiences.

[The_Human_Cypher]

Thank Goodness!

Here's the list of must sees in the next MM update:

Gnolls
Drow
Wights
Mummies
Yuan-Ti
Dogs
Hyenas
Fire Giants
Bearded Devils

Ogres, Orcs, Dragons, and Vampires should be on this list as well

[FranOhmsford]

Ogres, Orcs, Dragons, and Vampires should be on this list as well

Oooh - How did I miss Ogres?

Orcs, Dragons and Vamps can be saved for the update after next though.

[Missing_Minds]

The reason they have a skeleton crew is because they haven't given players enough content to stick around.

Do you realize how much that "battle cry" is whined about in just about every single MMO out there?

Players for the most part have high expectations (that many probably don't realize) and when that expectation isn't met, they leave. These game hoppers are prolific and there isn't much any company can do about them.

[FranOhmsford]

2nd MM Update for 2015:

Orcs
Dragons
Vamps
Tieflings
Lizard Men
Harpies
Air Elementals
Earth Elementals
Clay Golems
Frost Giants

[kmankowski]

Earth Elementals

Volume 2

[FranOhmsford]

Volume 2

The other Elemental type then - We currently have 2/4.