Producer's Letter

[Mryal]

Very exciting letter really, all of it is great.
But does this means theres no more ranged pass or new trees for druid/arti/fvs? i recall devs mentioning these.

Also yay for the possibility of reworking coal chamber.Quest is just way too long and boring and it constantly reminds you of how stupid the ddo physics is when everytime you just so much touch a wall midair you are violently pushed several meters away for no reason.
Rest of vale quests dont really need to be touched in my opinion.

Epic Greensteel has to be called Blue Steel .

I prefer Dark Steel.Then you never have to worry about your weapon breaking.

Also i agree with everyone that is putting raids like deathwyrm and etc as good raids.And tempest spine.Tempest spine is great.Tempest spine epic please!

[Nascoe]

He said 'corrupted Greensteel', which has me curious. How do you get more corrupt than a metal that is only found in deposits in Baatezu-tainted outer planes (namely, Devil-held parts of Shavarath, and The Nine Hells of Ba'ator)? Is it mixed with Abyssal Bloodiron? Gehennen Iron? Some Eladrin metal (and if so, the work you'd have to do to alloy metallic Lawful Evil with metallic Chaotic Good should be a doozy without it just exploding.)

Good point. And actually a really great point if used well IMO. What if it meant using "greensteel" and having to then mix it in with a bit of those other metals and based on which one you use you can get to a different mix / set of effects. Maybe even paired with an alignment limit for some? Or even making all these inner conflicts urge the weapon itself to become Sentient (that would mean having to combine 3 of them in one item?) - Edit: OR hey, maybe make us use those "Mystic tokens" from champions to make a fully corrupted item sentient as well!

I really would be in favour of being able to use either a heroic greensteel blank OR an already fully crafted greensteel item OR get a new "elite" one, where you would need slightly different processes maybe (an extra ritual / quest / raidrun? to make the heroic blank an epic one for example and allowing finalised items a bit of a "shortcut").

Oh, and as you mentioned cannith crafting, what if your crafting lvl had an influence on how successfull you are at this complicated mixing of already tainted greensteel to make it utterly corrupted without falling apart? THAT would surely be an incentive for everyone to get their cannith crafting working.

[salmag]

Congrats Sev on the promotion. Hope they won't shift you ovewr to LOTRO anytime soon.

The additions are good, but really NO GNOMES or mention of GNOMES. I am sorely disappointed.

[Missing_Minds]

Or, since it is further corrupted... Red Steel

Actually Green Steel was a material found in WotC splat books in 3.0 and I think earlier but I don't know what source to call out.

Baatorian Green Steel, page 13, WotC Arms and Equipment Guide.

In addition they also called out Gehennan Morghuth-Iron and Solmian Truesteel.

The additions are good, but really NO GNOMES or mention of GNOMES. I am sorely disappointed.

I've seen several people echo this sentiment, but I don't. Why? My opinion is that gnomes should be tiny sized creatures ala smurfs, not bald bearded halflings to be used to min/max wizards. But the main reason why I'm not sad to see them not show up is because of the work involved. They'd have to resize again all armors to fit another race (pretty huge undertaking) let alone think of the fiasco they had with trying to make half orcs and half elves. It would not be pretty. Then they'd have to tweek animations to make the attacks and castings smooth.

Frankly I'm much more disappointed no more spells are getting released.

[MangLord]

After reading that letter, it looks like this might be the best year ever for DDO.

[Loromir]

On epic greensteel, I would like to suggest that them do not surpass Thunderforged weaponry, but instead make them a bit weaker than TF, but stay at ML 20 at any upgrade level. Just like the heroic greensteel, they would become perfect twink items, and not immediately destroy TF crafting.

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I don't believe EGreensteel needs to be weaker than TF...just different. TF weapons seem to be focused on a few types of powerful damages/effects. Just make sure EGreensteel is different. Not better or worse...just different.


And can I say...EGreensteel Armor???? Yes????

[TheDr0wRanger]

So, let me get this straight:

Two quests are fine, one CAN be tedious because of the newly introduced Champion mechanic (which leads us to think that the problem is not the quest itself but the new mechanic), and the other two because of their mechanics.

Coalescence chamber is pretty straightforward, requires some jumping yeah but I can't see the problem there honestly. The first run through it can be long but the next runs can be done in under 10 minutes.

Let Sleeping Dust Lie is probably the most annoying one (I actually like it) but you could just make few changes to make it enjoyable: make the orange named spawn only in one area. Other than that, it's a maze-like quest. You HAVE TO get lost and repeat some segments of the quest in order to learn the path and complete it.


Said this, I still clearly don't see how the whole Vale of Twilight pack needs to be revamped. In fact, it DOESN'T.

See, the thing is they need to be revamped because they are worse than they could be. Whether they are overall bad is much less important, given that the area is being revisited at Epic.

Coal chamber is a pain, sure it can be done easily by some folks with a certain disposition(I will never stop getting lost there), but it could be less miserable for everyone with some tweaking. Why not? It's not like they have to delete the old, tedious version to change it in Epic. GH saw improvements and those quests weren't even as bad.

I hear this a lot, and I don't get it. Why is there such a response to trying to revamp content that's being re-released? If they don't change anything, then I and others are correct when we complain that 2/3rds of "new" content is simply the same stuff we ran 5-10 levels ago, only with all the numbers turned up and some mob-names changed. I am pretty sick of GH by the time I get done for the second time in 2-5 days.

Especially because if they add this stuff at cap, it becomes the new end-game and you MUST run it ad nauseum to advance characters, maybe some people are nostalgic enough to want the same basic content twice per life, personally I like novelty and added value.


Now, to another issue.

Can we get some idea of how you plan not to ruin the new endgame for like 5 different character styles? Henshin, AoV, Crusader, Flame Savants and a sizeable chunk of Druids are all going to be feeling some degree of pain out in Shavarath. Sure, the Druids can swap forms and AOV isn't all that much fire, but Henshin, Fire Savants and Crusaders are seriously getting shot in the foot. Crusader is new, relatively speaking, it seems really wrong to make this compelling tree and then make a nice sized chunk of it's powers do no damage. Fire Savants just barely got to be cool for a little bit and then back to the shelf. Respeccing a Savant into a new element is doable but given gear and EDs and spell choices it's a big deal.

If Shavarath is still fire immune in the same way it used to be, I have two toons that will be completely crippled until the next pack comes out. Please tell me you aren't going to do this again?
Maybe give Savants an ability that lets them do up to 25% damage to things immune to their element, add 50% damage to fire immune enemies to the Henshin capstone applied only to their ki-abilities.

[Qhualor]

Epic Shavarath was a surprise, but everything else I could tell was coming. It all sounds good so far, but I'm going to say that with this end game content coming I hope it gives players a good reason to park characters at cap. It would be great to see once again a cap raiding scene and see the return of raid trains. With Shavarath I hope TOD sets get their improvements and missing sets, but also become a raid worth running again. I wonder if there will be a way to upgrade the heroic sets to epic. I'm also a little worried about revamping Vale. Please don't crucible the quests or flagging and please don't casualize this new content.

[dontmater]

few improvements for Ranger ..... is he talking about the ranged damage thing that isn't release yet?

[Drwaz99]

Thanks for the letter and congrats on the promotion.

Now I am curious as to the over/under on him disappearing from the forums & game.

[mezzorco]

few improvements for Ranger ..... is he talking about the ranged damage thing that isn't release yet?

He's talking about tempest T5 and removing prereqs from Overwhelming Crit.

Now both STR and DEX based melee rangers are much more viable and can deal lots of aoe damage.

[catouse9]

sounds really cool... can not wait to enter the Temple... If it is anything like the Haunted Halls I am sure I will love it.

[MadCookieQueen]

I'm really impressed with the Producer's Letter and hats off to you and congrats on the promotion!

But I have a few questions and comments (cause there are not enough of those running around ;p)


So if we are getting Warlock and it has alignment restrictions in 3.5 Can be Chaotic (CG, CN both are rare) or it can be evil (LE, NE, CE) Though rare to actually see any Warlock not in the evil vein...does this mean we are finally getting evil alignment and all the fun that comes with it?

Why Warlock instead of bringing in Psionics (Soul Knife is of interest though a Wilder would really show you how Shirardi is done) or Knights or Samurais or Beguilers or any of the other base classes out of 3.5? I don't see exactly how Warlock fills any kind of role that is lacking, from a perspective (honestly if I want a blaster or more of a ranged spellcaster...revamp Arcane Archer tree to have a bit more omph and I'd go Ranger/Sorc for kicks). Knights would really work for anything out of Eveningstar and you know PDKs could actually be Knights (crazy I know!) Psionics would open up worlds of possibilities for expanded game play and systems. Beguilers give you a Bard/Rogue that uses hand crossbows, enchantment spells, deals with traps and etc. (Actually they are kind of cool and for the gnome fans, many beguilers are gnomes or halflings...imagine a halfling that isn't a monkcher)

I get the horns and tails art issue with doing Tiefling (sad really...Tieflings make amazing assassins and even Warlocks)...but why not give us Aasimars? We really could use a Wisdom oriented race and Aasimars are the best choice and all you'd have to do is cross an elf with the skin tones and ears of human and you'd have it.



I await the flaming of the Warlock fans...

[The_Human_Cypher]

Thanks Severlin for your letter and exiting news,

but I feel somehow sad, because not one Forgotten Realms module is anounced- since I thought FR is a DDO prime world I am really astounished. Only one adventure a year is a little too less for me to think as DDO a FR game.

Best regards
Tarinia

The last update of 2015, Update 28, will probably be Forgotten Realms content. From what I can gather from the Producer's Letter, the schedule is something like this:

Update 25: Temple of Elemental Evil

Update 26: Shavarath / Warlock?

Update 27: Epic Vale / Level 30 / Epic Greensteel

Update 28: New Content, mostly likely FR, but not mentioned in the Letter

[The_Human_Cypher]

Thanks for the updates. It's nice to get a peak at your plans for the year.

One thing not mentioned that I really hope we can see this year is a new volume of the monster manual. There are so many more monsters without entries yet!

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

[Saekee]

Congrats on the promotion. Sounds like an exciting year ahead. The fragments are a good idea--looks like you were inspired by a thread posted a while back?
If certain threads actually do inspire new ideas, any hope of crediting the source?

[patang01]

Coal's unique design is pure awesome... EXCEPT that you have to climb TWICE... If it was just once up, it would be in my top 10 quests... Still a good quest IMO.

Dust = Autofail condition is easy to avoid... Nice to have a quest where you have to be careful sometimes...

Rainbow is completely soloable if you are a melee. Why do you say it's not? Carry the light with you for the really dark spots, put it away and pull out your weapon when you need to fight.

Dust is not easy to avoid unless you're caster or ranged. If you're melee you're at a significant disadvantage. I say remove the autofail feature after you save the queen. Once you done that there shouldn't be a chance to fail at the end fight; that would remove most of the grief.

[Grosbeak07]

Lots of good stuff and stuff I'll hold out judgement on until it's live.

Warlock makes sense last core class missing in DDO (using 5th edition), just PLEASE make it very different in spells or style from Wizard or Sorc.

Temple of Elemental Evil? Good Stuff.

Level 30? Do it sooner rather than later. Need to know what those 2 last levels look like, before we can even begin to see what an "endgame" for DDO will look like and whether your Epic Shavarath and Vale stories (and raids) will be up to snuff. Please re-work the exp needed to get to 30. Currently I find levels 25 to 28 to be a drag, not because we don't have enough content (we do in my opinion), but it's just grind.

Lag isn't a huge problem for me, but it is for some. Glad to see it's a priority.

Always looking forward to the things you haven't talked about. Those often turn out to be the best.

Good luck in 2015!

[Loromir]

We are currently discussing options to move the datacenter and update the hardware, but I have no firm plans to announce at this time.


Sev~

This comment...above all else...reassures me that there may still be some life left in DDO. The fact they they are even considering spending money on hardware, leads me to believe they have not given up on DDO yet.


Also...Congrats Sev on the new position.

[Grosbeak07]

This comment...above all else...reassures me that there may still be some life left in DDO. The fact they they are even considering spending money on hardware, leads me to believe they have not given up on DDO yet.


Also...Congrats Sev on the new position.

On the lotro side they are thinking about moving their European servers back to the EU. Doubt that's in the plans for DDO, but it shows that this is a company priority, not just a game priority.