DDO Producer's Letter - September 2016

[Severlin]

I hope you've been enjoying Against the Slave Lords, checking out our new Cannith Crafting update, and helping us celebrate a decade of DDO! I'm writing today to talk about our plans for the rest of the year and beyond.

Our goal is to release two updates before the end of the year. One of the updates will be larger, the other smaller, and combined they'll bring several things that players have long asked for to DDO. Since we are currently working on two updates, it isn't clear yet what will be in each update. We'll release things when they are ready, so if something isn't ready in time for next month, we'll see if we can finalize it for the following update in December.

Here's the list of Things We’re Working On:

~ Updated Night Revels event: First up, we’re working on an update to The Night Revels, our Halloween-themed event which debuted last year. We’re planning to add a couple of new quests along with a handful of new items that will focus on cosmetic fun. We’re expecting the updated Night Revels to debut later in October.

~ A new Questing hub: We've long wanted to help people figure out where to go and what to do when they come back to DDO from some time away, and this hub will help both them as well as anyone who'd like to get to quest entrances more quickly. We don't have a name for this new system yet, and we'll be talking a lot more about it in the coming weeks.

~ World Character Transfers: We've heard from many of you that our process to transfer characters from one world to another needs to be more intuitive and take less time. Our new launcher-based system will send a character or characters from one world to another in seconds, and players will be able to pay for their transfers directly with Turbine Points. We think you'll like this transfer system, which is already in place in our sister game Lord of the Rings Online. Expect to see it debut by the end of the year.

~ Deity feats: We’ll be adding new Deities that players can follow, and new feats that can be unlocked by players who find favor with their deity of choice.

~ A new free dungeon: We’re expecting to release a new free dungeon in December that we think fans of A Study in Sable will enjoy. This quest sends adventurers to a popular type of pen and paper location that hasn’t had much representation in DDO. I’d say more, but I don’t want to spoil it.

~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

~ Monks and Favored Soul updates: Continuing our class work, you can expect an overhaul of handwraps in addition to updated enhancement trees for both classes.

Looking beyond 2016, we know many of you have been hearing the rumors and teases about Ravenloft, so let's talk Strahd. We're 100% interested in bringing Ravenloft to DDO, and are working through the process to make it happen. We don't have an exact time frame in mind, although our current plan has it coming to DDO sometime towards the end of 2017. We can't wait to bring one of the most popular and classic adventures in Dungeons & Dragons history to the game.

We’re also planning for our 11^th anniversary in late February! We’re hoping to debut a new playable race for the anniversary along with some new adventuring. We’ve been asking you whether you’d like to play a kobold or dragonborn, and while the final decision hasn’t been made, it looks like many of you would enjoy the dragonborn, so we’ll see what the anniversary brings.

It remains an honor to be your Executive Producer, and I'll be back later this year to look ahead to 2017. Until next time, may the loot gods smile on you.

~ Sev

[apocaladle]

neat

[Enderoc]

All these proposed changes are music to most people's ears I would say.

Despite a lot of negativity that people who have familiarized themselves by the old systems have been expressing, I think all of the development being done has been on key to a better DDO experience.

[Hoglum]

I hope you've been enjoying Against the Slave Lords,

~ Sev

Yes, very nice, thank you! I love seeing D&D modules coming to life in DDO!

White Plume Mountain would be cool.

[Memnir]

[Livmo]

Allot win woot woot!

[mezzorco]

Today I was asking myself if a bear druid overhaul, coupled with a wildshape+handwraps fix, was near.
Well, handwraps are a step in the good direction.

[Splunge]

Thanks for posting a new producer's letter. It's always fun to hear about the plans for DDO.

~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

While it would be nice to have more character bank storage, I'd rather keep what we have than have it replaced with the current shared bank interface. I use the tabs to sort my stuff. Yes, I can search for items in the shared bank interface, but I can only search by name. That doesn't help me when I pull things out of my TR cache and store them in my character bank by ML so that they're easier to find when I level up. It also doesn't help if I'm working through a few epic past lives and store my level 26 gear set in one tab so that it's really easy to swap gear when I hit level 26. It also doesn't allow me to put certain "important" items in the first tab so that I always see them when I open the bank. It also doesn't allow me to put items that I'll no longer use this life on a separate tab so that I don't have to bother looking through them when I'm searching for something.

Of course, the best option would be if you improve the shared storage interface before changing the personal bank storage to use it. Here are a few things that could be improved with the shared bank interface:

- There's no easy way to move items around in the list.

- Paging through the shared crafting storage can be slow and painful. I have about 30 pages, and I sometimes use it to move items among toons. The last items added go at the end of the list, and it isn't always easy to search for them.

- Adding new sorting methods (ML, item type, reverse time order, etc.) would make it easier to use.

- Adding new search methods (ML, item type, item attributes, etc.) would make it easier to use.

- Having subdirectories in the storage that we can rename would really help with keeping things sorted and easy to find.

[Krelar]

~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

I suspect I understand why you are doing this but I hate that you are taking the interface I like (character bank) and changing it to the one I hate (shared bank).

My character bank has all the tabs nicely organized so I can quickly find the items I'm looking for. Most of the time I'm looking for all the items of a certain ML range so searching in the shared bank is nowhere near as useful as being able to pick the order things are in. Meanwhile I will have put all items of the same ML on the same tab in my character bank making it easy to find what I'm looking for.

That said the shared bank interface would be somewhat more useful if it listed the most recent items first instead of the oldest, and if I didn't have to scroll AND go to other pages. (It should be one or the other not both).

[RobbinB]

~ World Character Transfers: We've heard from many of you that our process to transfer characters from one world to another needs to be more intuitive and take less time. Our new launcher-based system will send a character or characters from one world to another in seconds, and players will be able to pay for their transfers directly with Turbine Points. We think you'll like this transfer system, which is already in place in our sister game Lord of the Rings Online. Expect to see it debut by the end of the year.

This seems really cool. Is there any way for me to tell if my toons name is already taken on another server, prior to actually transferring it? For example, I have 3 toons named Chulka, Pulka, and Dulka. I want to transfer all 3 or none at all, without having to change a name. Can I somehow check if those names are taken on the servers I might consider transfering to?

[Steve_Howe]

~ Monks and Favored Soul updates: Continuing our class work, you can expect an overhaul of handwraps in addition to updated enhancement trees for both classes.

My favorite part. Yay!

[Cordovan]

This seems really cool. Is there any way for me to tell if my toons name is already taken on another server, prior to actually transferring it? For example, I have 3 toons named Chulka, Pulka, and Dulka. I want to transfer all 3 or none at all, without having to change a name. Can I somehow check if those names are taken on the servers I might consider transfering to?

My understanding is the transfer system itself doesn't have a check on it, but you could log into the world and attempt to create a character with the name if it's a concern. Of course you'll then want to delete the character prior to transferring.

[daboyz]

Returning players can always use as much help as possible to get back up to speed. Any love thrown their way is much appreciated. There is no game like this game, it is haunting.

[DagazUlf]

Just a "thumbs-up" here. Move along.

[glmfw1]

Kobold

[Thalmor]

My understanding is the transfer system itself doesn't have a check on it, but you could log into the world and attempt to create a character with the name if it's a concern. Of course you'll then want to delete the character prior to transferring.

You could just search for the name by trying to add as a friend.

[R1ncewind]

~ A new free dungeon: We’re expecting to release a new free dungeon in December that we think fans of A Study in Sable will enjoy. This quest sends adventurers to a popular type of pen and paper location that hasn’t had much representation in DDO. I’d say more, but I don’t want to spoil it.

~ Sev

I hope it's a BIG dungeon, because its seems lackluster.

On another topic, Sev any chance to start working on a random generated dungeon for end game, with ingredients as rewards ( so you can update the rewards if new content appears), you can even take some old dungeons ( maybe even mixing part of them) with random mobs on it , specially champions with new random abilities, to keep the game alive in between updates, something that works mostly as a challenge with some useful reward.

[changelingamuck]

While it would be nice to have more character bank storage, I'd rather keep what we have than have it replaced with the current shared bank interface. I use the tabs to sort my stuff. Yes, I can search for items in the shared bank interface, but I can only search by name. That doesn't help me when I pull things out of my TR cache and store them in my character bank by ML so that they're easier to find when I level up.

This is also my concern about such a UI change.

[alancarp]

~Character Bank Storage: We’re working to take the user interface used for your Shared Account Bank and Crafting Storage and bring it to your personal character bank. Besides an improved look and functionality, this change will allow us to offer additional character bank storage space in the future.

With the epic levels, I would dearly love to have much more shared bank space. Been maxed out for a couple of years. Heck, more _character_ bank space would likewise be welcomed and quickly purchased.

[gravisrs]

~ World Character Transfers: We've heard from many of you that our process to transfer characters from one world to another needs to be more intuitive and take less time. Our new launcher-based system will send a character or characters from one world to another in seconds, and players will be able to pay for their transfers directly with Turbine Points. We think you'll like this transfer system, which is already in place in our sister game Lord of the Rings Online. Expect to see it debut by the end of the year.

~ Sev

Since this procedure won't involve a human resource anymore - will it be cheaper ?