DDO Needs a Shot of Adrenaline

[maddong]

1. Fix the lag so we can run 12 person raids on elite. Humor us and disable guild renown (and guild decay) until it is fixed to see if it makes a difference (make it a toggle so you can turn it on/off by server). Priority number 1 of course.

2. Give a lesser version of the grouping bonus permanently (perhaps 2%/party member or 1%/raid member, ie 10% grouping and 11% raiding for full parties). Right now it is faster to zerg on epic normal for xp by yourself.

3. ETR brings you back to level 22 instead of level 20. To partially undo the damage you did with the level cap increase.

4. 1 free heroic otto's stone and 1 free epic otto's stone per account per server when you log on during the 1st month of the next update (Turbine apologizing for the lag).

[Qhualor]

you had me rallying for you until I went through the list.

1. unless there are technical reasons, I don't see why not disable renown on Lama.

2. running on EN is done because its brainlessly easy and fast xp. adding a small grouping bonus doesn't really change anything for these types of players. the last grouping bonus I didn't notice an increase on lfms or changes in preferred leveling progression. more than likely, those that already post lfms and those that wait around for leaders benefit the most from it.

I will say that I did a few lives back mostly EN focused on sagas mostly. I lasted about a life and a half and couldn't stand it anymore. I was bored out of my skull. I only do it now if I'm just short of making my next level and I see no other lfms up.

3. damage? what damage? it was announced a long long time ago that cap was eventually going to be 30, not 25 or 28.

4. what does a free past life have to do with lag? yes, I get it. lag contributed to players slowing down on the TR train, not logging in, logging off earlier than usual and dying many times. more appropriately I would prefer a few xp pots that I saw ticking down while I was frozen in place, but a clear moneymaker for Turbine like Ottos is going too far I think from a business standpoint.

[MistaMagic]

you had me rallying for you until I went through the list.

1. unless there are technical reasons, I don't see why not disable renown on Lama.

I think you misunderstood the OP's post on this as he was not talking about Lama but the real servers. If you have ever done LH Shroud recently you will find that in part 2 every time a boss is killed u get Guild renown and a lag spike which has caused many a time for the crystal to not be shattered as the whole party is lagged out.

[Anaximandroz]

I guess the op means the damage of rebalance of xp curve who make us stuck more time in the low epics, and makes we choose between xp and farming stuff.

[jalont]

1. Fix the lag so we can run 12 person raids on elite. Humor us and disable guild renown (and guild decay) until it is fixed to see if it makes a difference (make it a toggle so you can turn it on/off by server). Priority number 1 of course.

2. Give a lesser version of the grouping bonus permanently (perhaps 2%/party member or 1%/raid member, ie 10% grouping and 11% raiding for full parties). Right now it is faster to zerg on epic normal for xp by yourself.

3. ETR brings you back to level 22 instead of level 20. To partially undo the damage you did with the level cap increase.

4. 1 free heroic otto's stone and 1 free epic otto's stone per account per server when you log on during the 1st month of the next update (Turbine apologizing for the lag).

1. I'm not seeing lag in LE/EE raids except for raids where there's "coding" lag, such as DoJ, which has nothing to do with renown. It's hardcoded in the raid. But sure, if others are seeing lag in other raids, then I guess they can try this.

2. No. That's silly. XP literally rains from the sky. It has gotten easier to level over the years, not harder.

3. No. See above.

4. I'd love a stone.

[Seikojin]

I thought there was going to be some real good ideas here. The only thing I got from this was adjustments tot he exp bonus. You can have the group bonus be better on higher difficulties. So when active, get +1% per member on normal, +2% on hard, and +4% on elite.

This way group bonus for normal would be +5%, +10% on hard, +20% on elite. Raid bonus would be +11% on normal, +22% on hard, and +44% on elite.

I still don't think it should be on all the time. Despite pushing for it that way when I initially discussed it.

What would make DDO mo betta right now? 1 billion dollars of budget? I think with that they could afford to do the things they would want to do. Like update the engine.

[janave]

1. Fix the lag so we can run 12 person raids on elite. Humor us and disable guild renown (and guild decay) until it is fixed to see if it makes a difference (make it a toggle so you can turn it on/off by server). Priority number 1 of course.

2. Give a lesser version of the grouping bonus permanently (perhaps 2%/party member or 1%/raid member, ie 10% grouping and 11% raiding for full parties). Right now it is faster to zerg on epic normal for xp by yourself.

3. ETR brings you back to level 22 instead of level 20. To partially undo the damage you did with the level cap increase.

4. 1 free heroic otto's stone and 1 free epic otto's stone per account per server when you log on during the 1st month of the next update (Turbine apologizing for the lag).

3) I find this most bothersome, i really wish they start adding some extra sources of exp %, the additional work is crazy now to get an EPL "just cus - sorry late to the party". This is huge penalty for those who play alts and every single newcomer. +10% stacking epic exp pots on the remnant vendor for example. Your 2) also helps with this some.

[lyrecono]

1. Fix the lag so we can run 12 person raids on elite. Humor us and disable guild renown (and guild decay) until it is fixed to see if it makes a difference (make it a toggle so you can turn it on/off by server). Priority number 1 of course.

2. Give a lesser version of the grouping bonus permanently (perhaps 2%/party member or 1%/raid member, ie 10% grouping and 11% raiding for full parties). Right now it is faster to zerg on epic normal for xp by yourself.

3. ETR brings you back to level 22 instead of level 20. To partially undo the damage you did with the level cap increase.

4. 1 free heroic otto's stone and 1 free epic otto's stone per account per server when you log on during the 1st month of the next update (Turbine apologizing for the lag).

Yawn....

These days the server is deserted.
My guild is one of those top notch elite only raiding guilds, is? more like was, not many bother to log anymore.
Its made worse by the loot.
They run (LE if they can get competent people or LH)Tempest Spine and (LH or LN)Shroud on a regular basis, not for the armors or shroud ingredients.
The shroud melee weapons & trinkets (gloves/helmets/bracers/etc) are terribly under powered.
They are running it for the trash loot.

Yes, the trash loot.
It's insulting to farm for trash loot like that.
That and it will explode in people's face at one point, like it always has in the past.

@ the op, your suggestions will only make people log in to get their stone.

Here are some solutions:

1, Lower the grind for exp, 8 million epic exp is too much, bring it back to 6, making it worth it again to buy epic stones (if that's your primary concern).
2, Fix the connection issues&lag.
3, Send out a general email to all your DDO players to tell m you fixed your product.
4, Fix your game-play, back in the day, we used to play dungeons in 3D, now we get these flat surfaced, kill everything in the room with 50k hp, connected by lame storytelling.
Where are the STK's? why the lazzy quest design? not every quest needs the fluff of the Xoriat chains but some "tomb raiding" would be nice

5, And for pete's sake, Turbine, give us proper named loot!!!

[GlassCannon]

Yawn....

These days the server is deserted.
My guild is one of those top notch elite only raiding guilds, is? more like was, not many bother to log anymore.
Its made worse by the loot.
They run (LE if they can get competent people or LH)Tempest Spine and (LH or LN)Shroud on a regular basis, not for the armors or shroud ingredients.
The shroud melee weapons & trinkets (gloves/helmets/bracers/etc) are terribly under powered.
They are running it for the trash loot.

Yes, the trash loot.
It's insulting to farm for trash loot like that.
That and it will explode in people's face at one point, like it always has in the past.

@ the op, your suggestions will only make people log in to get their stone.

Here are some solutions:

1, Lower the grind for exp, 8 million epic exp is too much, bring it back to 6, making it worth it again to buy epic stones (if that's your primary concern).
2, Fix the connection issues&lag.
3, Send out a general email to all your DDO players to tell m you fixed your product.
4, Fix your game-play, back in the day, we used to play dungeons in 3D, now we get these flat surfaced, kill everything in the room with 50k hp, connected by lame storytelling.
Where are the STK's? why the lazzy quest design? not every quest needs the fluff of the Xoriat chains but some "tomb raiding" would be nice

5, And for pete's sake, Turbine, give us proper named loot!!!

This reads a lot better than the OP and the concepts are more solidly grounded in reality.

1) Definitely. The changes to the level cap for ITRing and ETRing hurt new folks more than older ones and the returning players the hardest of all. Lvl 30 needs to be 6 mil xp again. That, or make the ETR/ITR cap 28 due to what you've done with lvl 29-30 gear (ugh).

2) Engine. I keep repeating this over and over and over again. Update the engine. Your issues stem from serialization in the code and those serialized processes need to GO. Look into Vulkan and Mantle, as video cards are now headed that direction. We really need to leverage all the cores on a multicore system too. DDO can't run with a primary and overflow processor and ignore the other 2/4/20/600/whatever. Neural computers are coming in the next 4-6 years that run with low-output processor clusters in the thousands and vastly outperform single-core and multi-core systems due to load sharing.

3) This is cheap, easy and spammers do it all the time. Every day your email box is hit with this kind of stuff because it's quick, cheap and easy. Just send a mass email to your former customers to let them know you've updated the game engine to Frostbite or something and that you'd love them to come back and play your game again.

4) Level Design is a key element in game design. In fact, I think Turbine has been so focused on lore that they've lost the Design aspect of making new stuff.

5) There's plenty of named loot, just not enough balanced effects to keep it useful. Most named loot was made back in DDO: Stormreach and needs a complete overhaul. Some of it got the excruciatingly underpowered Red/Purple/etc Augment Slot system but again, that's ultra-weak (1d8 at lvl 20? Are you serious?) and it needs an overhaul.

6) Not mentioned: Other D&D styled games have an option to run a procedurally generated random dungeon with no real plotline that the player sets up before they head in to said dungeon and they use that to grind out XP outside of the campaign/story setting. Why does DDO not have this? It would save the Devs a lot of headache by putting the content load on players for some of their TRing/grouping needs rather than having to constantly find and build new content, which would allow more of a laytime between new quests while keeping players busy. This would also be quite lovely to fill the gap when half the group asks that maddening question that has you tearing your hair out every time: "Is this Free to Play?"