Is this a good trend? Happening in LOTR?

[BigErkyKid]

Now, if it becomes a mandatory part of game play, that's different. But so far, DDO's options are purely voluntary, optional and/or convenience items.

Really? So you can either pay money for XP boosters (tomes of learning, XP pots, VIP), or you can take X times, with X>1, to achieve the same amount of character progression as someone who is buying store options. Of course paying is optional, but then for equal time you will have an objectively worse character. Because people love having worse characters than the other people in their group.

Do you really think that design is not affected by the store? Do you honestly believe XP curves and requirements, drop rates of tomes, and other crucial game design decisions are not taken with sales in mind?

Please, it is painfully obvious that the store is the motivation behind many decisions.

The really sad truth is that micro transactions are now ruling how a lot of MMOs are designed. The goal is no longer to maximize revenue via convincing people to play. The goal is to maximize revenue by getting the people who play to pay.

This is very different, and in an extremely bad way for players. If the goal is to just convince people to buy in, you want a very appealing game. If the goal is to get people playing to pay, you need to design the game so that paying is more fun than not paying.

A very appealing game is objectively good for the players. There are some concerns over swallow flashy games, but ultimately quality is good.

A game designed to make you pay while playing is bad. Why? Because the vast majority of micro transactions are designed to prey on our cognitive biases. Heat of the moment decisions, keeping up with the Joneses, veiling spending via artificial currencies, lottery based systems, you are almost there mechanisms, pay for convenience. Non of the design choices between micro transactions benefit the players in the least.

Even if you can ignore all the "nudges" towards spending, you are worse off. Why? Because extra long grinds, power imbalances, all those mechanisms are affecting your gameplay. You may not pay, but you then "suffer" the consequences. Obviously in a micro based game not paying HAS to be less fun than paying. So if you are not paying you keep your money, but your fun suffers.

People may be more or less aware of how micro trans are hurting their experience, but have no doubt, it is most definitely making the game worse.

[LightBear]

So, this is the new scheme then, just put the truth on a fake new site and it's automatically deemed as a lie?

[Renvar]

Really? So you can either pay money for XP boosters (tomes of learning, XP pots, VIP), or you can take X times, with X>1, to achieve the same amount of character progression as someone who is buying store options. Of course paying is optional, but then for equal time you will have an objectively worse character. Because people love having worse characters than the other people in their group.

A) Comparison is the death of joy. This is a PvE game. Stop focusing so much on what everyone else has and you will be much happier.

B) Some people spend more time on the game than I do. Because of that they can do whole TR's in a single day or two days. It takes me much longer. How is that fair? They spend more time than me and now I am behind. That hurts my fun. I don't want to spend that much time on the game. Or I can't spend that much time because I have to use my time for other things.

Replace TIME with MONEY in this sentence. What is different? Nothing. Some people have more time than others. Some have more money than others. Who cares what personal resource you use to build the character you want to enjoy the game your way? You want to restrict how much money people can spend to improve their character. What if someone else wanted to restrict how much time you could spend to improve your character? No single account can play more than 15 hours per week. Because it is unfair to those who can't (or don't want to) play more than that but will feel bad and ruin their fun if their characters are behind the people who do want to play more than 15 hours per week. Crazy, right? They would never restrict how long you can play per week. Why should they limit how you can spend to level that if you have more money than time? Why do people with more free time deserve an inherent advantage in the game?

The only things that are available in the store that I disagree with are mana pots, rez cakes, and extra powerful healing pots you can't find in game. Those directly impact your ability to complete content you couldn't otherwise complete.

People may be more or less aware of how micro trans are hurting their experience, but have no doubt, it is most definitely making the game worse.

A lot of people are unaware of how players who play 50+ hours per week are hurting their experience. Grind is primarily present because some people over-play the game and play out content and build options in days and weeks instead of months and years. One of the biggest balancing challenges for the developer is how to make content that pleases people who play the game like it is a full time job (with overtime) and still make content that pleases people who play 8-15 hours per week (the average, as MMO studies prove). And every year the game goes on that gap widens. Absent the 50+ hour per week crowd, I doubt you ever need a Reaper Mode, for example.

[Amundir]

B) Some people spend more time on the game than I do. Because of that they can do whole TR's in a single day or two days. It takes me much longer. How is that fair? They spend more time than me and now I am behind. That hurts my fun. I don't want to spend that much time on the game. Or I can't spend that much time because I have to use my time for other things.

+infinity

[zehnvhex]

A) Comparison is the death of joy.

The counter-argument was, back in the day at least, that MMO's were going to be an equalizer. You couldn't buy your way to the top like you can in real life. It was, and still is, a terrible and naive argument though. Especially since having money can often afford you more time.

Anyways...

I'd love if they swapped to an all cosmetic/QoL cash shop like PoE and dispersed most of the items you can buy now more liberally into the game. Like quintupple the drop chance of tomes, hearts, etc...make all the content freely available. Get people back into the game and playing and then sell them awesome outfits like the Halloween armor.

They'll never do it of course. They're locked into an archaic way of doing things. Sev probably hasn't left his house since 2011, let alone looked up how much bank games are making now doing things the new way. So instead they're just going to keep crapping out reasons to buy Otto's boxes and DDO is going to slowly ebb because they still can't figure out why discouraging grouping is a bad idea.

[BigErkyKid]

Some people have more time than others. Some have more money than others. Who cares what personal resource you use to build the character you want to enjoy the game your way?

No, that's not how it works at all.

SSG wants your money. To get your money they code things in a way that makes spending money appealing.

This is why it is bad. To make spending appealing, they need to make not spending unappealing (at least for sufficient people).

[Renvar]

The counter-argument was, back in the day at least, that MMO's were going to be an equalizer. You couldn't buy your way to the top like you can in real life. It was, and still is, a terrible and naive argument though. Especially since having money can often afford you more time.

Anyways...

I'd love if they swapped to an all cosmetic/QoL cash shop like PoE and dispersed most of the items you can buy now more liberally into the game. Like quintupple the drop chance of tomes, hearts, etc...make all the content freely available. Get people back into the game and playing and then sell them awesome outfits like the Halloween armor.

They'll never do it of course. They're locked into an archaic way of doing things. Sev probably hasn't left his house since 2011, let alone looked up how much bank games are making now doing things the new way. So instead they're just going to keep crapping out reasons to buy Otto's boxes and DDO is going to slowly ebb because they still can't figure out why discouraging grouping is a bad idea.

Personally, I would be fine with a game targeted on the 8-15 hour per week crowd. Make the content and grind reasonable for that group. Some examples: If in 10 hours per week (after getting rid of XP pots and ViP bonuses and bravery bonuses) you could make a regular run 1-20 take 4 weeks. 20-30, 2 weeks, that would be solid. Make it so that drop rates are such that you don't have to run content more than 3-4 times to get the items you want (no chest rerolls either. Just named item drops in the 33-50% range). Re-running quests has much heavier XP penalties. Make the quests average run time between 15 and 25 minutes each, with balanced parties needed, multiple paths to completion. Remove all the self healing bloat. Raids have higher drop rates. Reincarnation yields very incremental rewards. Each character can reincarnate a maximum of 10 times to limit the power from reincarnation and create more build choices that include strategic use of PL's vs. the Have them All mentality and avoid creating too big a gulf between old and new players or casual and more dedicated players.

The store is about cosmetics and QoL stuff (bank spaces and such). The game would be more horizontal than vertical. The players who want the pure vertical grind would be bored and leave (at least between updates) as would the players who want to play 40-60 hours per week and run out of things to do but the game would be easier to incorporate new players into the existing player base as the game doesn't have such a large power gap, top to bottom.

Too much catering to the top end causes problems.

[Cantor]

The players who want the pure vertical grind would be bored and leave (at least between updates) as would the players who want to play 40-60 hours per week and run out of things to do

You could easily still spend that time, you'd just do it on multiple characters. With a cap on past lives you couldn't make every build with that one character, you would need alts with different PLs for different builds.

Each character can reincarnate a maximum of 10 times to limit the power from reincarnation and create more build choices that include strategic use of PL's

This sounds extreme when you say cap PLs at 10. But you could actually adapt this to work in the current system without actually taking anything away completely.

Adapt heroic PLs to have stances like the epics, say Martial/Caster/Specialist with one active from each category. As a tradeoff for limiting active PLs add the pay feat PL to the effect.

Racial pasts only function for current race. (grant racial AP based on having PLs in current race 3/6/10 AP for 1/2/3 PL in current race)

Change epic pasts to remove the passive bonus, only have it apply for the active stance (basically cap passive at 3 instead of 9).

These changes would leave max effects from PL for a total of 3 iconic, 12 epic, 9 heroic, 3 racial= still 27 past lives

3 runs 15-30 (3iconic, 3 heroic)
3 runs 20-30 (3epic)
9 runs 1-30 (6 heroic/3racial, 9epic)

Looks really well balanced to me. Basically 12 lives (if you do an epic per iconic run).

Leave completionist as a chaser, it's not a game breaking difference when you take out stacking up everything. The big advantage a completionist has would be the versatility you have in changing builds. Others might choose to have alts with a different set of limited PLs, thus having 3-4 fully active PLd characters for the same time input of a single completionist.

[Renvar]

No, that's not how it works at all.

SSG wants your money. To get your money they code things in a way that makes spending money appealing.

This is why it is bad. To make spending appealing, they need to make not spending unappealing (at least for sufficient people).

A for profit, software development company that "code things in a way that makes spending money appealing"

Gee....Sounds awful. Downright criminal.

I wonder of clothing companies make clothing that makes buying their products appealing.

I wonder if restaurants make food that tastes good to make buying their products appealing.

I wonder if car manufacturers make cars that look good and drive well to make buying their products appealing.

That's pretty much every company in the world.

SSG makes a game that is fun to play. And they offer options that appeal to people who want to play it in different ways.
- They have options for people who like to play 40+ hours per week and not run out of things to do.
- They have options for people who want to play on the hardest difficulties, but don't have time to acquire the PL's needed.

What they don't have an option for is people who want to have the best stuff and all the PL's but don't want to invest either time OR money. Those that want to keep up with the joneses without actually having to do anything to keep up. Sorry. But you have to give something to get something. @$$, Gas, or Grass. Nobody rides for free.

I buy Ottos boxes because I have limited play time. I enjoy TRing. I enjoy End Game. I don't have time for both. So I use the boxes to make it possible to enjoy everything I would otherwise invest time to obtain. I'm skipping the leveling because I HAVE to. Not because I WANT to. If I had the time, I'd play every life 1-20 and enjoy it. Because I like playing DDO.

Your premise is that they may the game un-fun so that people will pay to avoid it. I disagree. I don't get why anyone would pay for something that is un-fun. If you aren't having fun, do something else.

[Renvar]

You could easily still spend that time, you'd just do it on multiple characters. With a cap on past lives you couldn't make every build with that one character, you would need alts with different PLs for different builds.




This sounds extreme when you say cap PLs at 10. But you could actually adapt this to work in the current system without actually taking away much.

Adapt heroic PLs to have stances like the epics, say Martial/Caster/Specialist with one active from each category.

Racial pasts only function for current race. (grant racial AP based on having PLs in current race 3/6/10 for 1/2/3 PL in current race)

Change epic/iconic pasts to remove the passive bonus, only have it apply for the active stance (basically cap passive at 3 instead of 9).

These changes would leave max effects from PL for a total of 3 iconic, 12 epic, 9 heroic, 3 racial= still 24 lives (with iconic giving heroic and iconic if you grant racial with heroic then it's down to 21)

Leave completionist as a chaser, it's not a game breaking difference when you take out stacking up everything.

I agree with everything you said. Lots of ways you could adapt the system. Making the PL's a pool of which you can have X active at one time (you pick which ones each life based on your build) would be a great way to limit the grind for some players while adding a flexibility carrot for the hard core players.

i would love to see Alting be more viable. That makes the building aspect even more fun.

[blerkington]

My two main difficulties with gambling games in MMO are these:

1. It's available to minors but costs money. Yes, won't someone think of the children, with their parents' credit cards, poor impulse control and impaired ability to make decisions.

2. There is usually not enough transparency about the odds. For people to make informed decisions about spending, they need to know the chance of winning.

Knowing the odds also allows players to compare what is claimed about those odds and what is actually happening (given a decent sample size) so there's less scope for company-beneficial/player-fleecing 'accidents' when programming the odds.

Interestingly, Cryptic recently stopped offering NWO in China after new legislation was passed there meaning they would have to disclose the odds of getting the various prizes from their lockboxes. So either the odds were either that embarrassingly bad, or something even less wholesome was going on like the odds being varied on the fly.

DDO's approach seems more principled than MMOs that use lockboxes and other similar things. While Turbine/SSG has tried some tacky things to make money in the past, on the whole their approach is fairly good by industry standards. I hope that doesn't change.

Thanks.

[DaviMOC]

I'm ok with gambling on DDO if it goes as the daily rolls goes. XP boosts, xp stones or even selling those gear ingredients. This game is not very competitive, there's no real pvp, neither to be the "first of realm" in some reaper 10 raid that would promote such thing. It allows you to walk it on your own speed and it dont spoil your fun or joy to be "left behind" as a given moment someone would be back at the same ship you are.

However, the daily rolls looks a bit odd. Its way easier to get a 1-50 than a 51-100. Wasnt suppose to have same % of chances?

Things that really worries me are some game mechanics that are Store locked. We should have acess to +1 to +3 lesser heart of woods by some token system. Being completely random reward or store bound sucks in special when it comes to iconics. It could be locked out behind a really heavy grind wall but it should be accessible in game. Inventory is kind messed( check the reincarnation cache drama) why pushing it to a even more annoying and demanding thing that nobody enjoys?

Bags. Game mechanics pushes you toward a very boring inventory manage system. It overflows your toon with gear that you cant sell as you may need it on your next life, you may end up having a full set for each epic level. As if the gear isn't enough if you plan to use the crafting system is better to grab some store bound bags. Even using the legendary raid tokens bags you wont be able to store the ingredients for your GS, TF, Epic Crafting. Cannith crafting may be very demading on it too. You dont want to miss that special little collectible or just spend it randomly just to open space on your inv. and the ingame bags are just not enough.

Cosmetics are the only "noble" item on a game store considered by most players, however I feel like it could be a litte cheaper. Its nice thing to do/have and most cosmetics people use are only event or giveways, few are those that buys these things. It could have a cheaper price(at least the mirror) so it would be a more viable and more players could use it. I was about to talk about shared bank, but as it is free for vip I think it is ok.

Tried to search for more things that really annoys in this game's store and could not find it and the few ones I fond have nothing to do with gambling or luck rolls. Even when we talk the very small "pay to win" mechanics we have on ddo it really dont matter much. If someone walks around with an inventory full of cakes, xp boosts, otto's stone, have a toon with +7 tomes I'm perfectly fine with it, as it dont impacts my own gameplay. However locking out some game mechanics even for subscribers/vip players is a bad move that a I hardly stand.

[Paisheng]

A for profit, software development company that "code things in a way that makes spending money appealing"

Gee....Sounds awful. Downright criminal.

I wonder of clothing companies make clothing that makes buying their products appealing.

I wonder if restaurants make food that tastes good to make buying their products appealing.

I wonder if car manufacturers make cars that look good and drive well to make buying their products appealing.

That's pretty much every company in the world.

SSG makes a game that is fun to play. And they offer options that appeal to people who want to play it in different ways.
- They have options for people who like to play 40+ hours per week and not run out of things to do.
- They have options for people who want to play on the hardest difficulties, but don't have time to acquire the PL's needed.

What they don't have an option for is people who want to have the best stuff and all the PL's but don't want to invest either time OR money. Those that want to keep up with the joneses without actually having to do anything to keep up. Sorry. But you have to give something to get something. @$$, Gas, or Grass. Nobody rides for free.

I buy Ottos boxes because I have limited play time. I enjoy TRing. I enjoy End Game. I don't have time for both. So I use the boxes to make it possible to enjoy everything I would otherwise invest time to obtain. I'm skipping the leveling because I HAVE to. Not because I WANT to. If I had the time, I'd play every life 1-20 and enjoy it. Because I like playing DDO.

Your premise is that they may the game un-fun so that people will pay to avoid it. I disagree. I don't get why anyone would pay for something that is un-fun. If you aren't having fun, do something else.

Agreed. I might add, I hope SSG makes money, lots of money. I wish them well....they work hard and earn it. I never feel bad when I buy anything off the store or ddo...I'm supporting a product I enjoy and I want them to stay in business. Capitalism is a great thing....other mmos will occasionally challenge DDO with some better products or pricing, etc....at which point they will make improvements to their product to keep it cutting edge and stay in business too. Go DDO!

[BigErkyKid]

A for profit, software development company that "code things in a way that makes spending money appealing"

Gee....Sounds awful. Downright criminal.

The problem is how they get the money. I am happy to p2play, not so much when it is p2skip.

I buy Ottos boxes because I have limited play time. I enjoy TRing. I enjoy End Game. I don't have time for both

.

Bingo! That's is the design. They don't design for the f2play person who unlocks everything though grind. They design to catch people like you or me.

And it makes me wonder, why do you buy Otto boxes? Because you want the power granted by the PLs but you don't have the time to play through them. Same goes for tomes and XP pots.

Of course, unlike the person who doesn't look around that you described, you do look around, and you do want to keep up more or less. That's what pushes you to drop 40$ on a box. Almost the price of a freaking AAA game just to SKIP playing DDO.

And that's when bad incentives breed. You could create an expansion and sell it for 40-60 bucks, or you could tweak a reincarnation code and "sell" 30 racial reincarnations via otto's, tomes, XP pots...

Same goes for tomes. You could play TOEE until your eyes bleed, or you can drop the money in the store.

But there is nothing good about this. Has the game become more fun now because they added +7 tomes? No, they simply bloated numbers.

You can pay to skip, but it doesn't the game more fun, it is asking for money in veiled ways, and it breeds all kinds of bad behaviors.

[Wonedream]

DDO is all about the p2skip:

- LR: p2skip playing a build that sucks, or having to re level another one when you want a change.
- Otto's: p2skip having to grind XP
- Chest re rolls: p2skip repetitions of a chest
- XP boosters: pots&tomes, p2skip hours of gameplay

While you can play without paying for any of those, everything in the game is designed to push you towards paying.

I do feel it is true that the gaming industry is acquiring some of the worst habits from casinos.

And at the end of the day, freaking mediocre games! The depth and sense of innovation of some of the old titles is completely gone nowadays.

Most long standing titles I know are going towards fast food status (hearts of iron, total war). Fast paced, flashy, swallow. And for MMOs, incredibly grindy.

This is one of the reasons I hate TR system. Screw pay 2 skip stuff! It sucks!

[axel15810]

Funny, I actually made a video very recently on the shadow of war issue on my non-DDO youtube channel.

But I don't think it has any relation to LOTRO or DDO. Console gaming is a very different beast because you pay full price up front, so you expect a full game with no additional purchases. In free games, microtransactions and lootboxes usually are fine since the base game is free. They make the game worse if overused, but it's still a free game so can't argue much.

DDO has never done anything nearly as intrusive as the lootboxes we'll see in shadow of war. DDO has a pretty good balance. Some pay to win like ottos boxes, +20 hearts and tomes. But it's fairly marginal and not over the line at all, especially for a free game.

[Chai]

Really? So you can either pay money for XP boosters (tomes of learning, XP pots, VIP), or you can take X times, with X>1, to achieve the same amount of character progression as someone who is buying store options. Of course paying is optional, but then for equal time you will have an objectively worse character. Because people love having worse characters than the other people in their group.

Do you really think that design is not affected by the store? Do you honestly believe XP curves and requirements, drop rates of tomes, and other crucial game design decisions are not taken with sales in mind?

Please, it is painfully obvious that the store is the motivation behind many decisions.

The really sad truth is that micro transactions are now ruling how a lot of MMOs are designed. The goal is no longer to maximize revenue via convincing people to play. The goal is to maximize revenue by getting the people who play to pay.

This is very different, and in an extremely bad way for players. If the goal is to just convince people to buy in, you want a very appealing game. If the goal is to get people playing to pay, you need to design the game so that paying is more fun than not paying.

A very appealing game is objectively good for the players. There are some concerns over swallow flashy games, but ultimately quality is good.

A game designed to make you pay while playing is bad. Why? Because the vast majority of micro transactions are designed to prey on our cognitive biases. Heat of the moment decisions, keeping up with the Joneses, veiling spending via artificial currencies, lottery based systems, you are almost there mechanisms, pay for convenience. Non of the design choices between micro transactions benefit the players in the least.

Even if you can ignore all the "nudges" towards spending, you are worse off. Why? Because extra long grinds, power imbalances, all those mechanisms are affecting your gameplay. You may not pay, but you then "suffer" the consequences. Obviously in a micro based game not paying HAS to be less fun than paying. So if you are not paying you keep your money, but your fun suffers.

People may be more or less aware of how micro trans are hurting their experience, but have no doubt, it is most definitely making the game worse.

I agree 100%

What was laughable in the past is when people claimed that widespread support for p2w did not affect those who did not use it. They were dead wrong. One recent example which I have seen alot of people who blindly supported p2w in the past complaining about in the past few months is the back loaded grind system which got put into place shortly after reaper was also put into place. Once the previous front loaded system was as successful as it was in getting people to pay to skip, and characters played by the players in the market audience who will spend to get the power faster started becoming saturated with bought and paid for character power, it was only a matter of time before the company began designing more grind systems, with higher levels of grind needed in order to get the majority of power out of it - AKA a back loaded grind system.

Whats extra hilarious is most of those folks who got called on this deny vehemently that the more recent back loaded grind system has anything to do with making more money by incentivizing paying to circumvent the grind even more than in the past, and even tried to claim the company would make more money if they returned to the front loaded grind system strategy. This of course demonstrates a lack of understand of how marketing this to the player base all works. Much of that player support was garnered by introducing this to them in limited amounts over longer periods of time. This made people believe it wasnt that bad for their game experience due to the small degree, then when small degrees of it are added to it later they can simply claim its only another small degree being added so it cant be that bad. This "its only plus 1 more" argument ignores how all the "small degrees" add up to widen the gap between how long it would take to grind it all versus the small amount of time it would take to acquire it all with cash.

The claims that it doesnt affect players who dont use it have always been wrong, but they become even more objectively incorrect by degree each and every time the company adds more grind in order to sell grind circumvention to those who will gladly pay for it. Each time it happens it serves to widen the gap even further between those who paid and those who play to earn it in game. Those who dont use it are then confronted with an unrealistic amount of time needed to attain their goals due to added grind.

The elephant in the room is the shrinkage in headcount doesnt often mean shrinkage in revenue generation, as this monetization model makes most of its money off the smallest percentage of the population who spends the most money, and these are the highest price items that they spend on the most. Those most frustrated are those who arent willing to pay for loss aversion and grind mitigation so the revenue doesnt drop anywhere near as significantly as it does when big spenders leave. As the population dwindles, this provides the illusion that the game is dying for those on the outside looking in, but while this may be the case headcount wise, this may not be the case money wise. This affects the quality of the game itself, as the game is no longer the real product, but just the environment the actual product being sold is bought and used in, so the game is then modified in any way it needs to be in order to sell the most real product possible, resulting in the game itself becoming less fun for the majority of the player base who would rather play the game than buy their way past it with loss aversion and grind mitigation gimmicks.

Just when you were about to finish climbing that wall, the company adds multiplicatively more distance onto the top of the wall. Instead of doing this in the form of fresh new content and lateral progression systems like successful games with high populations do, this is added as a back loaded vertical progression system which has you play through the same content as before.