2015 DDO Players Council Update

[Vargouille]

The Council and their feedback is great. My thanks to present and past contributors of all kinds!

[Seikojin]

do your job
Gallanda was down AGAIN
stop implement stupid thing (champion who crashserver and kill fun on heroic at low lvl) and investing on descent server, thank you !!

are you professional you take money ! no ????

In this article https://www.ddo.com/en/news/2015-ddo...council-update manglord made the comment: "There are a lot of factors that I'd never even thought about that come in to play with every new quest and new pieces of loot."

I think this would be a good time for us to hear what this obscure factors are...what are the challenges the dev team faces that we as the general player population do know about that might prevent us from having exactly what we want when we want it.

This might go a long way in mitigating the frustration that is so prevalent with in the general DDO community.

I know it is infuriating to have your home server unavailable soo often. My biggest suggestion is to play on a separate server while G-land is down. In doing so, it will decrease the load on G-land and expose more of the problems there that lead to the crashes.

IF it is related to previous mass-exodusing to g-land, then that can be taken care of by players deleting characters. Or characters xferred there have CS rebuild their toons, minus loot. One. At. A. Time.

If it isn't that, then that previous solutions would do nothing. So what could be causing it then? Maybe load? Playing on a different server would help that.

If that doesn't help, then what? Maybe something bad is going on in game that causes massive problems, system wide?

[Artagon]

I've been a game designer myself (for RuneQuest, HeroQuest, and tangentially and uncredited-ly D&D 2E & 3E)

Sweet, time for you to work on HeroQuest 2.0! I volunteer my assistance.

[Natashaelle]

that can be taken care of by players deleting characters

Cold. Hard. Stare.

[Daerius of the Blessed Blades]

Does anyone like any of the named loot?

I didn't like it, and most PC members with an opinion didn't either. As said many times in the past, much of the PC feedback is taken and implemented. Often, we are simply a sounding board - if we don't present a compelling reason to change a dev and/or producer's mind, things proceed as originally designed. Much of our feedback results in tweaks, or like with the proposed rogue trap pass, entire portions being sent back to development. But much of our feedback is considered, and not implemented. Conspiracy theorists would say that the PC is a 'patsy' and a 'smokescreen', and the devs do what they want anyway. My experience is that they DO ask, and they always listen. But there isn't an unlimited amount of resources, and evidently scrapping or redesigning the pick wasn't one of the priorities. Some ideas win, others don't.

[dunklezhan]

Cold. Hard. Stare.

I was thinking something similar though I was going to just point out that it may well fix the problem... yet it is not a solution.


In Seikojin's defense though - I think the point of that particular suggestion was to highlight how unacceptable it was, and to lead into the CS idea.

But I would also say that CS rebuilding is also not a solution, as it's clearly not one we or the game can afford - it would take thousands of extra man hours, if the intention was for it not to take years of elapsed time 'absorbed' into CS usual work. Thousands. The research time alone to properly extract and capture all the relevant data would be huge - if that was remotely easy, character transfers wouldn't have taken such a long time to get automated - and then it very likely couldn't just be re-imported without bringing the bugs with it. No, it would have to be manually re-input to rebuild the characters, one skill point click at a time.

You'd also start having to get into whether characters over a certain age since last played would be included in the work in order to save costs and get it done in anything like a reasonable time... but that's never how DDO has worked. Old accounts persist. That's important for any MMO, doubly so for a F2P.

And folks losing their gear?

No, the solution really really has to be at the application or server layer, not the human one.

For now though, if it helps - you're welcome on Argo in your off hours, Ghallandans!

[Daerius of the Blessed Blades]

I know it is infuriating to have your home server unavailable soo often. My biggest suggestion is to play on a separate server while G-land is down.

Why would we Ghallandians ever want to go to a inferior server? A "sometimes dead server" is still better than an "always partially dead server"

#GhallandaPride

[InsanityIsYourFriend]

As with last years council exactly how much of their feedback was listened to/followed?

I wonder how many council members gave the thumbs up to the vendor trash that is Mythic Heavy Pick from ToEE?

I know someone had to point out that Was trash. common man make Mythics Mythic not vendor trash.

The pick was worse before... so much worse... Most of the loot changed from their base forms, but I can't say much more than that. Hope that answer suffices

[whereispowderedsilve]

The pick was worse before... so much worse... Most of the loot changed from their base forms, but I can't say much more than that. Hope that answer suffices

Hah I forgot you were on the council, Ze! Miss you buddy! :P! ! !
(It's go!(goraptors/gobluejays/goraiders etc).

[esojiul]

As with last years council exactly how much of their feedback was listened to/followed?

I wonder how many council members gave the thumbs up to the vendor trash that is Mythic Heavy Pick from ToEE?

I know someone had to point out that Was trash. common man make Mythics Mythic not vendor trash.

These the problem, focus on the loot and don´t care about the quest. Toee it a great quest, have everything.

The problem it the loot. the race for better loot spiral that will not lead to anything good. Example no one play LOB or MA etc etc.

ddo required have to standard for mythic gear, and mythical quest (1 epic level-for cap toons-lv32 quests/raids). Where mythical lob gear with mythical von 6 gear and mythical wk etc etc. Can have different effects , but they not to much different in their dmg and all weapons are good. where you can use Mythical sirroco in EE contents or mythical contents.

[RTN]

I don't always like the content or the design decisions, but I'm grateful that the Devs set up the Players Council and appear to be very engaged with it. I'm also grateful for the players that have served and are serving on the Players Council for taking the time and expending the energy to contribute. I think the game is better for this interaction and I want to say thanks to all involved.

[Natashaelle]

I was thinking something similar though I was going to just point out that it may well fix the problem... yet it is not a solution.


In Seikojin's defense though - I think the point of that particular suggestion was to highlight how unacceptable it was, and to lead into the CS idea.

Yeah well with perfect 20/20 hindsight, they needed to just move both Euro-servers in toto to the US, as they did 6-12 months later with the LOTRO ones ... & they ended up creating Cannith & Wayfinder anyway to handle the overflow ...

[InsanityIsYourFriend]

Hah I forgot you were on the council, Ze! Miss you buddy! :P! ! !
(It's go!(goraptors/gobluejays/goraiders etc).

yea i know, hurry up n get a comp and get back in game!

[Oxarhamar]

These the problem, focus on the loot and don´t care about the quest. Toee it a great quest, have everything.

The problem it the loot. the race for better loot spiral that will not lead to anything good. Example no one play LOB or MA etc etc.

ddo required have to standard for mythic gear, and mythical quest (1 epic level-for cap toons-lv32 quests/raids). Where mythical lob gear with mythical von 6 gear and mythical wk etc etc. Can have different effects , but they not to much different in their dmg and all weapons are good. where you can use Mythical sirroco in EE contents or mythical contents.

There's 2 Carrots in DDO after the new car smell wears of a quest or Raid. Loot & XP

I actually love ToEE but, I am still disappointed with both the XP & the Loot

[Oxarhamar]

The pick was worse before... so much worse... Most of the loot changed from their base forms, but I can't say much more than that. Hope that answer suffices

Hard to believe it was worse, thanks for trying anyways

[Seikojin]

Cold. Hard. Stare.

I know. I wouldn't want to either. I have curated 37 characters on Sarlona over the last 9-10 years. Deleting them is a no option for me in my mind.

I didn't like it, and most PC members with an opinion didn't either. As said many times in the past, much of the PC feedback is taken and implemented. Often, we are simply a sounding board - if we don't present a compelling reason to change a dev and/or producer's mind, things proceed as originally designed. Much of our feedback results in tweaks, or like with the proposed rogue trap pass, entire portions being sent back to development. But much of our feedback is considered, and not implemented. Conspiracy theorists would say that the PC is a 'patsy' and a 'smokescreen', and the devs do what they want anyway. My experience is that they DO ask, and they always listen. But there isn't an unlimited amount of resources, and evidently scrapping or redesigning the pick wasn't one of the priorities. Some ideas win, others don't.

Well we as players will never see the whole breadth of what is possible; so our feedback will be small vertical slices in the big cake picture. If you look at ToEE, a lot of the initial design was augmented based on our feedback. So they do make changes. However there are some hard limits put in place so power creep is controlled. And I would go so far as to say the ToEE crafted weapons show this to a high degree. .25 [W] more than t3 TF, and potentially stackable vulnerability. Nothing that is like a firework, but stuff that has utility. The named items have a seperate category and design. So it is legit, however unfair to compare TF to named items.

I was thinking something similar though I was going to just point out that it may well fix the problem... yet it is not a solution.


In Seikojin's defense though - I think the point of that particular suggestion was to highlight how unacceptable it was, and to lead into the CS idea.

But I would also say that CS rebuilding is also not a solution, as it's clearly not one we or the game can afford - it would take thousands of extra man hours, if the intention was for it not to take years of elapsed time 'absorbed' into CS usual work. Thousands. The research time alone to properly extract and capture all the relevant data would be huge - if that was remotely easy, character transfers wouldn't have taken such a long time to get automated - and then it very likely couldn't just be re-imported without bringing the bugs with it. No, it would have to be manually re-input to rebuild the characters, one skill point click at a time.

You'd also start having to get into whether characters over a certain age since last played would be included in the work in order to save costs and get it done in anything like a reasonable time... but that's never how DDO has worked. Old accounts persist. That's important for any MMO, doubly so for a F2P.

And folks losing their gear?

No, the solution really really has to be at the application or server layer, not the human one.

For now though, if it helps - you're welcome on Argo in your off hours, Ghallandans!

And to be clear, I am not saying these should be the definitive path we go. It is just a way to help reduce the variables in the problem. Personally, I think the high player count on Ghal is the problem. if 1% of existing logged in users are actively attempting exploits on a mature server, Ghal would have the most attempting. That in its own right can bring anything down.

Seeing others talk about mass transfers made me think of that problem. There are bugs in character transfers, so that process can be linked to problems and instability there as well.

About 10 of my characters used to be on a different server before the big merge, so if there were inherent problems it would be found in them; except I deleted them (not level 7 yet) when I earned vet 2. Making a character creates several unique things (id's, attributes, code), so anything that gets broken from transfers should be wiped away by deleting.

Why would we Ghallandians ever want to go to a inferior server? A "sometimes dead server" is still better than an "always partially dead server"

#GhallandaPride

By dead do you mean down? If you like Ghal, cool. I just am trying to bring up that something is causing the downtime. Something the devs can't talk about. As players, doing some of the stuff I brought up is in our control to help troubleshoot and reduce/fix the probable problem.

There's 2 Carrots in DDO after the new car smell wears of a quest or Raid. Loot & XP

I actually love ToEE but, I am still disappointed with both the XP & the Loot

Only thing Toee needs is ingredient drops increased. 3 to 5 times as many as current.

[Oxarhamar]

snip~

Only thing Toee needs is ingredient drops increased. 3 to 5 times as many as current.

just increase the # of rares would be fine too

it would solve 2 problems XP & Ingredient drops

(IMO Rusted & Parasol are easy enough) its the Node Rares that seam too rare

[Shoemaker]

As with last years council exactly how much of their feedback was listened to/followed?

I wonder how many council members gave the thumbs up to the vendor trash that is Mythic Heavy Pick from ToEE?

I know someone had to point out that Was trash. common man make Mythics Mythic not vendor trash.

I know that just about every comment made by the PC was listened to, and responded to in some way. Some times it was a "yeah, that is a great thought/idea/concept" and a change in what was released was seen from that; sometimes it was just a change in what was released because the devs are so busy trying to get stuff done they didn't have time to respond and say "got it, done"; some times it was just a response, "that's a great idea, but due to this fact we hadn't mentioned, it just isn't doable"; and, I have to admit some of our comments and ideas were just horrible and weren't worthy of a dev response. I personally had some really bad ideas that I posted (as did many others whether or not they'll admit it or not), I'm glad they didn't waste the time to respond to those. I think that overall, the PC has been very influential, and the community at large is reaping the benefits.

I guess I didn't notice the pick, but since I don't have a pick wielding build, I don't know why I would have. I'm sorry that you think the PC let you down on that, and perhaps there will be another new pick before long that you will approve of.

[Shoemaker]

So the ridiculous numbers of Horned Devils and Abishai kills in the MM4 made it past the player council?

Actually, it didn't. A couple of us were hounding hard on the developers about kill counts and type counts. What I will say is that everyone knows there are plans for a new Vale/Shroud and I believe I read something someplace about a new Shav pack or something like that. I'll be willing to wager that the devs took that new content into account when setting those particular numbers. Just my speculation though...

[Shoemaker]

Well, a hearty thank you to the PC, and particularly those who are invested in participating. Having been there, I understand the comments Cordovan was kind enough to quote in the update. Seems to me, overall, that the PC is having an influence within the constraints of the the Producer's vision and the dev team's resources and abilities.

And to Cordovan - thank you very much for the update. I appreciate it. I was definitely wondering what was happening with the PC and looking for some news.

I think I speak for most of the PC and Cordovan when I say, "You are welcome!"

A couple of questions:

...

Besides loot, what did the PC think of other aspects of ToEE? Mob spawns, exploring, dividing it into smaller chunks? Slayer kill counts? and the like.


Again thanks to all on the PC giving their time and feedback.

Personally, I didn't follow (and don't generally follow) the loot threads. I prefer to focus on the content itself. Slayer kill counts actually had the top two tiers added in part based on PC feedback. We also did a LOT of bug finding and reporting (and suggesting fixes of which some were implemented) from Lama, and a few other minor changes. There are actually a fair number of bugs that haven't yet been fixed (mostly minor) and as such I expect a polish in a coming update at some point.


As a side-note of sorts: Something I learned from being on the PC is that they do indeed take actual bug reports serious even though we don't see responses on the other end. I've personally suggested that an overhaul of the bug reporting system is needed, and quite a few of the devs have agreed but have stated that it would be a huge change to implement. So, at this point it is a matter of the community pushing to get it done to get that need/benefit vs. cost thing to make it worth it.