Hey Lynnabel - please fix!

[Mindos]

I've deleted warlocks

Annnnnnnd you're back in the good graces...

[Graskitch]

TLDR: hey pls allow us to place the magical d20 inside the dice bag again now that it's harmless, would be nice to have that inventory space back and i'm one of those guys that keep twigs and coal in alts just in case

I have asked for this before but been told that it would never happen.

but if it cannot be made bankable, or put inside the dice bag again, can it be turned into a functional item that does a /roll 1d20 in party chat if you double click on it?

[Gratch]

All of the bard songs now list appropriate durations, PDK feat now lists appropriate duration, Chactar Luridae will hopefully keep their name this go around, cleric thing - divine cleansing? - now lists appropriate duration, I've deleted warlocks, and some other stuff that's totally insanely cool but can't show you guys until u36!

Why did you delete both warlocks AND stuff that's "totally insanely cool"? Is it one of those yin/yang balancing activities?
This is because of people being obnoxious on the forums!?! I, um, thought that's what we were supposed to do. I'm sorry. Can we have "totally insanely cool" things again? Please.

Also if you delete warlocks - Who's going to Phwoosh, Phwoosh, Phwoosh all the mobs I've mass held or missile venomed? Every party needs a leaf blower or 5 Phwooshing.

Guess I could get used to melee doing dps... more of Whack, whack, phwam, plang, ting for each Phwoosh though. Except for Mr. Stevens from catering... that tray. Amazing.

[nokowi]

The devs were honest with why the stone of change thing is not going to be fixed in the near term. I love that honesty. I'm pretty sure almost any dev understands how databases work. I'm pretty they understand the enormity of the mess that the original stone of change "coding" is. They said it wasn't a normal database. And that the conversion would be nasty and complex.

So no +1 by Steelstar was needed?

At the end of the day, SSG has to decide where to put their resources. Having a DBA, and one who is good, i.e. expensive spend 6 months fixing some spaghetti code from 8+ years ago for a feature that really has no useful function anymore and no one really uses (and there are not a lot of people who are working on crunching dragonshards). Or use that same money/resource to get out new content that the majority of the players are going to benefit from.

Have you not been reading all the dev posts on this thread where Lynnabel is explaining how she is addressing the issues? She posted dozens of times on here explaining everything in clear language. Yet you grasp on to ONE response of dozens and whine about how Devs aren't addressing things.

When you have the "Actually" guy point out super-obvious things about databases to Devs, I don't think the Devs are really going to give that guy too much credence. Essentially the "Actually" guy is insulting the devs by saying "I don't think you guys have any idea what you are doing so let me explain something super-obvious to you about databases and what a DBA is... why didn't you think of this already?"

I'll file the above under "obvious". Steelstar could have easily made an appropriate response but chose not to.

Defending 12 year old code doesn't explain why they destroyed stealth play to prevent casual players from picking off mobs one at a time. "Realism" is a faux argument, because someone will need to explain to me how AoE spells only hit enemies. Having broken stealth, with the current set of devs, I am waiting to here how/when they are going to address what they broke without passing the buck as 12 year old problems they didn't create. I don't appreciate casual players now blaming everything under the sun (past lives, etc), now that they took yet another one of their tools (picking off with ranged, one at a time) away.

Notice the lack of admission that there is even a stealth/agro issue, and the attempt by Lynnabel to say there is not an issue?

Lastly, listing negatives towards devs as a positive "being part of the team" is a way to justify behavior that could have been avoided in the first place (at least in these 2 cases), by not posting a +1, and by not telling people that actually know how to play stealth that Lynnabel's four lives somehow let her understand the complexities of the agro system, in direct contrast to (20+ players) that have 1000x the combined experience with the stealth system.

Will devs learn from critical feedback, or ignore it and tell themselves they were correct all along?

All I can say is the purpose of the forums is to provide that critical feedback, and it's their game to succeed or fail with.

I would prefer, if Lynnabel tells us devs are too busy to read or respond to the thread, any additional dev responses are well thought out and informative, relevant to furthering discussion, and not of the +1 nature.

[Strambotica]

Dunno if this bug should be here, but in lvl 15 quest in Eveningstar "Escape Plan" the spell "Evard's Black Tentacles" is not working all the time.
It spend the SP, got timer and do the graphic but nothing happens to de mob (only work like... 1/20). Probly something with the graphic on the quest... near water nothing happens... on land... sometimes work. (and sorry for my bad english). (and is not a character build issue)

[DaveyCrockett]

This may have been mentioned, but I don't remember seeing it in this thread... Treasure bags that drop in any House C Challenge can be clicked, but do/give nothing.

[LrdSlvrhnd]

oh and the whole "Hey you stop touching your twists!" dealio is rough but necessary, it's part of the "hey stop touching EDs in heroics, I mean it!!!" system. Sorry! I'll see if I can get it to, uh, stop yelling.

I don't even mind it yelling multiple times once. But to have it spam every time you zone is unbearable.

[Don1966]

In the third Artie tree, Harper Agent, there is a tier 4 enhancement called Magic of Austerity which functions just like eschew materials. However, it does not work on the level 2 artie spell lucky cape, it does work on elemental weapons and lightning sphere, both of which normally require the same component.

[Grace_ana]

I don't even mind it yelling multiple times once. But to have it spam every time you zone is unbearable.

Yeah, if you click it during heroics at all, it will yell at you every time you zome until you hit epics and talk to the fatespinner. It's beyond obnoxious; I've accidentally clicked it a couple times (once at lvl 4....ugh).

[Niminae]

SSG: I hope you are taking note of this. As people who program and do technical things for your jobs, I'm sure none of this EVER occurred to you. This person has solved all your problems if only you do what he says. It's as easy as that. Forget about 12+ years of coding in DDO that you inherited. just hire a DBA and BAM! DDO is all good. I don't know why you guys didn't think of this. Genius!

I appreciate the sarcasm, and Steelstar's reply is also funny, if not for the reasons he might think. But despite my not being intimate with the platform the devs are working with, they have themselves described exactly what I laid out as the core issue. The players didn't invent the term "spaghetti code," I believe that was a dev quote. And no matter how *ahem* funny it might be to try to laugh off a post that pokes at a wound, the wound exists.

[Grace_ana]

The patch-on-patch-on-spaghetti code does concern me. If you look at WoW, which is just as old as DDO, they don't have half the lag/bug/performance issues DDO has. They keep up with the vast majority of the bugs and such. I personally don't like WoW, but for many people, given a choice between a buggy game and a smoother game, they'll choose the one that is less frustrating to play. That's not to say WoW doesn't have bugs; but they prioritize fixes higher.

They also have more resources, but DDO might have more resources too if the priorities were different. Content is important, but at some point the performance issues will overwhelm content. Content is useless if you can't play it. DoJ is a good example - it lags so badly I've either wiped or near-wiped probably 3/4 of the time. Consequently, we don't run it much. And players that love the game and put money into it have left over increasingly serious performance issues, which reduces resources.

I'm pointing this out because the issue of priorities has come up several times in this thread, and I'm becoming more and more concerned that leaving the more complicated bugs alone because "content is the priority" may actually kill the game. You can't retain players or attract and hold new players if performance issues keep increasing in severity and frequency.

[Heikenmoore]

Hi:

I understand this is the place to mention items needing correction, especially the ones that have been around for a long time.

1) When completing the quest "Maze of Madness" in Gianthold, the end-reward NPC "Eebilsteenk, Blackheart Grunt" does not show a checkmark over his head indicating an end-reward is available and thus can not be located with the map.

2) When using the teleporter NPC, "Eldovar Fleetleaf, Mountain Guide", at the entrance of Storm Horns, and paying with Astral Shards, the quest "A Break in the Ice" is listed as "A Breach in the Ice". Need to replace "Breach" with "Break".

Will add more later, if they are not already listed on this thread.

Thanks for your help.

[Lynnabel]

2) When using the teleporter NPC, "Eldovar Fleetleaf, Mountain Guide", at the entrance of Storm Horns, and paying with Astral Shards, the quest "A Break in the Ice" is listed as "A Breach in the Ice". Need to replace "Breach" with "Break".

Already in for U36.

[PermaBanned]

The patch-on-patch-on-spaghetti code does concern me. If you look at WoW, which is just as old as DDO, they don't have half the lag/bug/performance issues DDO has. They keep up with the vast majority of the bugs and such. I personally don't like WoW, but for many people, given a choice between a buggy game and a smoother game, they'll choose the one that is less frustrating to play. That's not to say WoW doesn't have bugs; but they prioritize fixes higher.

They also have more resources, but DDO might have more resources too if the priorities were different. Content is important, but at some point the performance issues will overwhelm content. Content is useless if you can't play it. DoJ is a good example - it lags so badly I've either wiped or near-wiped probably 3/4 of the time. Consequently, we don't run it much. And players that love the game and put money into it have left over increasingly serious performance issues, which reduces resources.

I'm pointing this out because the issue of priorities has come up several times in this thread, and I'm becoming more and more concerned that leaving the more complicated bugs alone because "content is the priority" may actually kill the game. You can't retain players or attract and hold new players if performance issues keep increasing in severity and frequency.

Wasn't it DoJ that the Devs had significant issues trying to diagnose because even though they experienced the performance issues while playing from home (their words) they couldn't experience or reproduce the issues on their in-house system?

[Niminae]

This may have been mentioned, but I don't remember seeing it in this thread... Treasure bags that drop in any House C Challenge can be clicked, but do/give nothing.

I have experienced this, but it isn't a 100% thing. Sometimes I can pick up a treasure bag, sometimes I can't. I see the same intermittent bug in VON5 and LTS.

[zehnvhex]

I appreciate the sarcasm, and Steelstar's reply is also funny, if not for the reasons he might think. But despite my not being intimate with the platform the devs are working with, they have themselves described exactly what I laid out as the core issue. The players didn't invent the term "spaghetti code," I believe that was a dev quote. And no matter how *ahem* funny it might be to try to laugh off a post that pokes at a wound, the wound exists.

It's worth looking at what happened recently in OW with Kaplan. It's easy as developers to get frustrated with players who don't understand or don't appreciate what goes on and lash out. What's important to remember is that we wouldn't be here if we weren't passionate about the game as well. Every time a developer makes a snide comment or ignores someone because of some petty whatever, it's very unprofessional and leaves a sour taste in many peoples mouths.

We can all appreciate the idiocy of "Well just fix the DB!" We all got a chuckle of it sure. But now that person is soured on the game and the dev team. Steel opted to (indirectly) mock the poster instead of reaching out to him and saying, "We're trying but it's insanely complex and we have to balance putting out short term content that in turn allows us to work on fixing long term issues. We're aware of the problems and as soon as we have a good solution you know we'll implement it." As much as I agree with Steel, it's also unprofessional and I can see how it would irk some people.

It's a small dev team with very close knit ties to the community and they aren't exactly a corporate environment so I don't exactly expect the same level of professionalism out of them that I do out of a company like Blizzard. On the other hand they're still game developers so they should be looking at a rant as a passionate person giving feedback. Instead of seeing 'yet another idiot who doesn't understand how complex the issue is' they should see 'a customer is really, really upset by this and has made it clear this is high on his list of what he dislikes about the game.'

A good example at DDO is Torc. I blasted the **** out of RtSO and pointed out how it was one giant pile of garbage. His response? "Thanks for the feedback, here are my thoughts on your points, thanks for playing DDO, I'm always looking to improve the game!" That made me supremely happy and I went out and bought the pack anyways because I was glad they hired someone like him back on.

On the other hand I post about how I think Lynn might not be understanding why we don't like the current stealth mechanics because she possibly didn't play one during the 'golden' era of stealth play. Instead of a "I understand you guys don't like the current iteration, we're reviewing it, can you tell me more about what you don't like?" I got attitude. It's kind of soured me on the process and I've decided to stop buying stuff in the store for awhile on my accounts and lost the energy to keep hyping the game on the various gaming forums I visit.

I absolutely love the work Steel does and his quests/content have been some of my favorite (with a handful of exceptions obviously). But pointing out someones lack of understanding in such a manner is what we the passionate forumites are for. I would gladly spend all day pointing out all the things about people like Chai that have already gotten me infractions. However, I would never want Cordo to call him out in such a manner.

My 2 coppers.

[PermaBanned]

It's worth looking at what happened recently in OW with Kaplan. It's easy as developers to get frustrated with players who don't understand or don't appreciate what goes on and lash out. What's important to remember is that we wouldn't be here if we weren't passionate about the game as well. Every time a developer makes a snide comment or ignores someone because of some petty whatever, it's very unprofessional and leaves a sour taste in many peoples mouths.

We can all appreciate the idiocy of "Well just fix the DB!" We all got a chuckle of it sure. But now that person is soured on the game and the dev team. Steel opted to (indirectly) mock the poster instead of reaching out to him and saying, "We're trying but it's insanely complex and we have to balance putting out short term content that in turn allows us to work on fixing long term issues. We're aware of the problems and as soon as we have a good solution you know we'll implement it." As much as I agree with Steel, it's also unprofessional and I can see how it would irk some people.

It's a small dev team with very close knit ties to the community and they aren't exactly a corporate environment so I don't exactly expect the same level of professionalism out of them that I do out of a company like Blizzard. On the other hand they're still game developers so they should be looking at a rant as a passionate person giving feedback. Instead of seeing 'yet another idiot who doesn't understand how complex the issue is' they should see 'a customer is really, really upset by this and has made it clear this is high on his list of what he dislikes about the game.'

A good example at DDO is Torc. I blasted the **** out of RtSO and pointed out how it was one giant pile of garbage. His response? "Thanks for the feedback, here are my thoughts on your points, thanks for playing DDO, I'm always looking to improve the game!" That made me supremely happy and I went out and bought the pack anyways because I was glad they hired someone like him back on.

On the other hand I post about how I think Lynn might not be understanding why we don't like the current stealth mechanics because she possibly didn't play one during the 'golden' era of stealth play. Instead of a "I understand you guys don't like the current iteration, we're reviewing it, can you tell me more about what you don't like?" I got attitude. It's kind of soured me on the process and I've decided to stop buying stuff in the store for awhile on my accounts and lost the energy to keep hyping the game on the various gaming forums I visit.

I absolutely love the work Steel does and his quests/content have been some of my favorite (with a handful of exceptions obviously). But pointing out someones lack of understanding in such a manner is what we the passionate forumites are for. I would gladly spend all day pointing out all the things about people like Chai that have already gotten me infractions. However, I would never want Cordo to call him out in such a manner.

My 2 coppers.

Just speaking for myself, I much prefer when the Devs interact with us like they're actually people rather than using carefully worded reply's to remain professional while wading through the "You guys don't play, don't understand your game, don't understand your audience, don't understand how to to your jobs" postings.

When initiating a dialogue, I speak how I want to be spoken to. When responding, I speak as I was spoken to.

[zehnvhex]

Just speaking for myself

Like I said, I would really recommend reading what happened with OW and Kaplan.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/c...oster_are_all/

tl;dr version:

Forum poster gets aggravated and makes a post saying, "Does blizzard even play their own game?" Kaplan responds by saying that he has won 800 more games than the poster. All of OW community goes "Oh snap!"

That should be the end of it right? Forum poster smacked down? Hurray for the good guys?

Well, turns out forum poster was just a passionate player who was frustrated. Kaplan ended up reaching out to him, apologized for his post, they had some dialog about what had upset the guy, now they are besties.

Now let's turn our heads back to DDO. Steel put the guy back in his place. Hurray for the good guys! Who cares if some random idiot who thinks databases are easy is now hurt and upset that a developer called him out, right? Screw that guy. Right?

[Qezuzu]

The patch-on-patch-on-spaghetti code does concern me. If you look at WoW, which is just as old as DDO, they don't have half the lag/bug/performance issues DDO has. They keep up with the vast majority of the bugs and such. I personally don't like WoW, but for many people, given a choice between a buggy game and a smoother game, they'll choose the one that is less frustrating to play. That's not to say WoW doesn't have bugs; but they prioritize fixes higher.

They also have more resources ...

"They also have more resources" is an understatement. WoW has an entire building dedicated to QA, and somewhere in the area of 300 QA testers.

[Grace_ana]

"They also have more resources" is an understatement. WoW has an entire building dedicated to QA, and somewhere in the area of 300 QA testers.

Not really the point. Had DDO kept up with fixes instead of workarounds and patches, it probably wouldn't be such a mess of code right now. If nearly equal priority was given to keeping up with fixes instead of just pushing out content content content (which invariably adds more bugs on top of spaghetti code patches), it would be in better shape. I'm not asking for a whole QA campus. I'm just bothered that the more complex fix requests always seem to get a response of "sorry, too much time, content is king."

Comtent is worthless if performance sucks.