Producer's Letter

[dunklezhan]

Shifters don't even change as much as druids so they shouldn't be hard to do

I also want to see them more than I want to see any other race Uska, but the way I see it Shifters will actually be way tougher to do than druids or frankly any other race have been to date. Doesn't mean I don't think Shifters would be a better addition than Tieflings, but I can't see it being anything other than massively labour intensive.

This is specifically because they don't change as radically as druids do.

The similarity between druids and shifters end at the tech developed to enable this:'when player pushes this button change these stats, apply this animation and replace player sprite with this model'.

Druids:
Wolves, bears and elementals all already existed in game. Animating the transformation and new attack sequences was the main challenge I think. But weapons, armour cosmetics, spell cast animations and all that aren't really a concern - most things either are hidden within the body or just plain aren't possible in the alternative forms.

Shifters:
Shifters have a second humanoid form. You might base their main form on humans, but shifters still need an entire set of racial animations doing for wearing gear, swinging weapons, casting spells and so on, plus a transformation animation. That's before you even get to the crunchy things like stats and enhancement trees.

So I can see why they'd want to do Tieflings next!

Tieflings:
Have a basic skin that can be reused. They need to do something with Helms & Character skins, possibly armour if they do tails but other than that can basically reuse existing models with some fine tuning of features for the character gen screen.

Aasimar:
reuse the existing human skin or possibly the elf one but without the pointy ears. So really should be very easy. As for reasons for having them at all - some people are clearly interested for reasons beyond the +Wis. Those reasons should be considered valid. Also, Aasimar are the other side of the same coin. If you're doing Tieflings, you really should do Aasimar. It would be like introducing Half Orcs without Half Elves.


Racial look and feel for Tieflings and Aasimar

For Tieflings and Aasimar the conversation about racial features is where the extra time might come in: they're both essentially halfbreeds, like Horcs and Helves. In both cases the 'distinctive racial features' appear on a spectrum - they are not fully expressed in all cases, and many of them don't necessarily appear at all on a given specimen.

Some tieflings, for example may have no distinguishing features except the eyes. Or very small horns, or a tail small enough to go inside clothes. Aasimar might have weird skin tones and oddly lustrous hair or maybe oddly compelling eyes... but they also may not have any of those things.

4th ed is where they locked everything in place and exaggerated all the features to always be present and prominent - essentially yet another retcon in the name of their blasted drive for 'streamlining', which just gutted the game completely.

My view is that the 'half breeds have weird mutations' thing that used to be core to DnD wherever you found them should be reflected at character creation in DDO - e.g.:

Tieflings
should be able to choose either Tails OR Horns, and should have the option to have both, but it should not be forced upon them. Horns and tails should have a few different looks, but no need to go crazy - think like adding scars to the face in terms of the number of necessary variations.

Aasimar
Their only outwardly manifested 'mutations' seems to be their propensity for odd skin and hair colours - so throw in some wierdness and new hairstyles, copy paste human or maybe elf without the pointy ears, and you could call it done. But note Aasimars often - not sometimes, often - pass themselves off for human for long periods and work in high places in society to 'do good' - so for Aasimar it should actually be possible to create one that is very close to 'normal' looking.

[Strider1963]

After nearly quitting the game due to the lag, I am very encouraged by this letter. You are hitting all the right points....lag, cannith crafting, broken monks, FVS pass, events, and augments. This will go a long ways towards making the game feel like it's not broken. I am very encouraged by this focus.

A few suggestions:
1. Be careful with your augment pass. You already abandoned the first augment system, and players really like the current augment system. When you describe going to a third augment system that is like shroud crafting, that make me cringe as that system is confusing and has not been well received. I would like the current system with more augment choices, which uses our current gear.
2. When you tweak the events please update the gear and give people that have seen the events for several years a reason to run them again. People don't run risia, crystal cove, and a lot of the other events because they are stale and have not been updated. I bet you could add some cool augments and more gear selection to make the events fresh.
3. Move up Aasimar to go with the FVS pass and third tree, that would be a very interesting direction to take the FVS class (but also make Aasimar appealing to Paladin, Sorcerer, and Warlock Enlighted Spirit).

#1 on the list /signed just make new augments available that use existing augment slots (e.g - True seeing and other goodies that aren't available with current augments)

[HuneyMunster]

New tree

Ps oh and kobolds. Really?

Maybe half kobolds.

No I want Half Owlbears

ie ManBearOwl...

[Faltout]

We were fairly happy with the Night Revels festival in the fall last year, and this year we will be looking to add more haunted dungeons a maybe some other surprises. The festival was fairly popular so we’d like to expand on it a bit.

Fairly popular? Where do you get your intel? If it comes from the number of people running the event, then you surely must consider that having +2 stacking INT and WIS would do that to the most boring events as well as the other loot from mabar. However, once people had what they were aiming for they would never set foot in the challenges again. Also, most of the reviews were negative.

If the plans to expand are "bring more old dungeons and spookify them with kobolds" then you are moving the WRONG direction.

[Jetrule]

No I want Half Owlbears

ie ManBearOwl...

You know for quite a while in D&D history Orks had very piglike faces So now I want a halfork druid who uses bear shape. http://otherworldminiatures.co.uk/fi...11/O5paint.jpg

[Uska]

With all the bug fixes classes and enchantment passes ....This kobolds thing is a joke right?

NO kobolds should be an eberron race as should full orcs and the goblinoids

[Uska]

But assassins, palemasters, dark monks, tieflings and disciples of darkness are all fine and dandy? Fiend pact warlocks and Great old one Cthulu warlocks?

Blackguards like favored souls attract and benefit from the favor of some deity. Blackguards may also have been favored by T'anrii or Fiends. For this reason they seem to fit very well with the favored soul concept. The dark powers have their chosen ones as well. Just like dark disciple clerics.

Blackguards originally (after their fore runners the anti paladins) Required base attack bonus 6, 5 ranks of hide and evil alignment to level up in the blackguard prestige. There were plenty of fighter, fighter rogue, ranger and cleric blackguards created by the D&D community. I recall one very interesting Barbarian Blackguard Tribal Chief npc in a dungeons magazine adventure module. It inspired me to do a Heart of darkness themed module for my campaign. The most Iconic were the fallen paladins true but probably not even the most common.

No I wasn't ok with PM's, assassins, dark monks and especially not ok with teiflings or any warlocks and I don't see how Blackguards fit with FvS in anyway shape or form other than that's what you would like.

Evil has no place in D&D or DDO and I resent them shoehorning in some stuff on the side.

[dunklezhan]

I don't see how Blackguards fit with FvS in anyway shape or form.

Agree. If they did Blackguard, it belongs in Paladin (ignoring Evil issues for the purposes of how it would have to work).

FVS can multiclass to paladin if they want and put points in Blackguard. Problem solved.

Either way, it shouldn't be a FVS tree.

[Steve_Howe]

Evil has no place in D&D or DDO and I resent them shoehorning in some stuff on the side.

Evil has PLENTY of places in DDO...just not with players.

[TakeItToTheLimit]

The kobold would be built on an entirely new rig, which means all the armor in the game would have to be created for that body type from scratch. That's very hard to budget.

We have brainstormed other options, from kobolds needing to craft armor into a kobold version, or even that kobolds can't wear normal armor at all. We've also considered making kobolds a sort of hard mode way to play the game.

Sev~

There might be a simple fix for that. Give the kobold NO torso slot but an extra ring slot (it's tail). That would minimise the amount of work required.

[Uska]

Evil has PLENTY of places in DDO...just not with players.

Yeah that was what I was talking about just figured people were smart enough to know that(but yeah your right I should have clarified it)

[Devil_the_sly]

While looking at new content, please look at the feasibility of actual 'choose your own adventure' content. Memoirs is not at all a choose your own adventure because there are no different choices to make. The story remains the same no matter what you say or do. An entirely different ending, entirely different boss, entirely different challenges. That is what I remember of 'choose your own adventure' and memoirs isn't. A Paladin has to randomly kill a person that they know nothing about? It would be awesome to actually see quests that aren't straight line quests all the time and would allow for a more entertaining game experience.

[iPuffinstuff]

Monk and Fvs...Awesome for them. Not to long ago monks were a broken op class. I still remember the days when every time I joined a group there was that 1 or 2 monks speed killing and zerging everything. Favored souls...they are not broken and can still hold there own in heroic and epic. Yes monks are pretty bad now but ya know what? They had there day and eventually they should get it back but the class that is and has always been broken is artificer. Yes, the Arti who is the most annoying player to accept in a group. Not only do we dislike the horrible twang of the repeater we all know there going to be the first in a room to attack....and die. Why? because they are just plain bad. 2 trees to work with and they either go spell casting and land nothing or they go xbow and do horrible damage. Why choose an arti except for flavor. Rogue does everything an arti does except better.
I say pull all the employees you have working on this festival that noone liked and put them on fixing artificer. Knock out three classes with one pass...equals awesome!

[PaulKorin1967]

I love hearing all the new content being added this year, and improving more on the lag situation.

Also, Could you fix the stone of change, allow for multiple batches of shards to be compressed at the same time, and also speed it up. I once spent up to an hour compressing all my Khyber and Siberys shards that i had stored in my bag bank.

And one more thing, could you create a chain of 5-6 short to medium length dungeons, but make them more challenging, normal difficulty is almost like elite, hard is tougher, and elite is almost impossible at level. ie. more mobs, difficult traps, complex puzzles, monsters are way higher levels. But, don't make them raids.

[Kebtid]

Monk and Fvs...Awesome for them. Not to long ago monks were a broken op class. I still remember the days when every time I joined a group there was that 1 or 2 monks speed killing and zerging everything. Favored souls...they are not broken and can still hold there own in heroic and epic. Yes monks are pretty bad now but ya know what? They had there day and eventually they should get it back but the class that is and has always been broken is artificer. Yes, the Arti who is the most annoying player to accept in a group. Not only do we dislike the horrible twang of the repeater we all know there going to be the first in a room to attack....and die. Why? because they are just plain bad. 2 trees to work with and they either go spell casting and land nothing or they go xbow and do horrible damage. Why choose an arti except for flavor. Rogue does everything an arti does except better.
I say pull all the employees you have working on this festival that noone liked and put them on fixing artificer. Knock out three classes with one pass...equals awesome!

Pure artie?
Yes terrible, artie multiclasses?
Quite good, not the best but worth the party slot.
There are some actually quite good nearly super op le Artie mclass builds out there.
Just think outside of the box.

Monks on ther other side, as wraps users are terrible unless you abuse primal destiny

[Nascoe]

I agree. 11-12 range has Necro III (which is terrible) and Desert (which is actually well designed, but due to the lack of content, solid loot, and strong xp is grossly over-ran to the point of burn out). I dread this level range more than any other. L8-9 has Necro II (also terrible, but massive XP) and Deleras (massive XP, not terrible but Undead, which are terrible).

Kobold could just not use regular armor. Given their body doesn't exactly match other PC races in structure, it's not a big leap to guess that they couldn't wear a standard suit of armor. If you have ever played Dwarf Fortress, this is how it works there as well. Narrow armor is for Goblins, large armor is for humans, 'normal' (relative) is for your Dwarves. And wooden armor is for Elves.However, if you use something like prayer beads as a Docent-like alternative, please make sure to go back and add in named versions across much of the old content, to match old named armors/docents.

IMO, the Shintao enhancements that work with Earth Stance need to have a different effect for each stance. Right now, no one uses anything but Earth because it gives better dps, better defense, and has enhancements which boost it further. I would actually make it a bit tankier, give it some inherent PRR and MRR, but give the crit multiplier to Fire. Each stance should have it's niche. Right now only Earth does, and it's every niche. Maybe Earth can be CON and x% HP, Fire Crit Multi and eventually Range, Wind Doublestrike/movement and attack Speed, Water PRR/MRR, and saves.

What if they just allow some armours to be turned into Goblin wearables by taking it (and maybe a stack of collectables or trap parts or something else) to the trap making station and just like we can make collars out of handwraps turn armors (would be enough to go up to mediums? at least someone can get some use out of them) including named ones, into goblin rags.

[JGHN]

Will the open tournament system be used or is that the reason for no A4. I would like to see an open tournament system not just fighting pvp but like the old days with archery,puzzle solving and others skills involved in the game.

[vystal]

The kobold would be built on an entirely new rig, which means all the armor in the game would have to be created for that body type from scratch. That's very hard to budget.

We have brainstormed other options, from kobolds needing to craft armor into a kobold version, or even that kobolds can't wear normal armor at all. We've also considered making kobolds a sort of hard mode way to play the game.

Sev~

I think you've pretty much nailed it with all of the Above: Kobolds cannot wear armor with exception to a few craftable forms of armor for those who choose to do so. Weapons etc. should be limited to small and simple. I think making it a "hard mode" type of build would be great. I would suggest though, keeping a perk or two worth the headache of the build such as one base stat that is unusually high while the rest are all negatives... ex: Dex 20 every other stat -2. This would allow for some still exciting builds end game for those who grind to it. And definitely only make it playable from level 1.

All that being said, all the current things you are working on at the moment look great.

[Janisis]

Playable Kobold Race = money printing machine.

Please tell us why this isn't going to happen. Is it a legal rights issue?

I will just copy and paste my character bio here:

All I want for next xmas is Kobold as a Race and cat pets for Artis and Druids...? Seriously only dogs!?!?!


(Say): Janisis says, ''You got deal! Gnoll champion fight Nude. Jan make kobolds, open little store, sell prayer beads and ham. So happy!'

I would pay cold hard cash for kobold iconic! I wouldn't care if costed me 20k turbine points. The graphics have to be there after crystal cove and everything for animations and what not. Just need to allow us some minor color tweaking and you have an easy race to add to the game. Not sure I would ever play artis or druids even if we got more than dog pets, but who knows, still not exactly happy with either class and its trees - I keep hoping though. I have had that on my bio for at least three years, at least since druid was added to the game so however long that has been.

[Clarice]

So still no love for clerics, clerics have never had an major update, just tacked onto fvs stuff, a shame really they are falling further and further behind the curve

oh and yes Playable kobolds please