Downtime Notice: 6:00 AM - 2:00 PM Eastern (-5 GMT) Wednesday, January 31st

[Cordovan]

UPDATE: The game worlds have reopened. Thank you!

The DDO Game Servers will be brought down on Wednesday, January 31st from 6:00 AM - 2:00 PM Eastern (-5 GMT) for maintenance and an update to the game. Since the change will only correct an exploit, there are no release notes. Thanks for your patience, and we'll see you back in the game soon!

[Gratch]

If only there was something that could entertain us during the downtime. Some words from Sev on his feelings of the recent past and future of DDO. Maybe formalized a bit given the monologue nature of the forums.


A letter to DDO players of sorts.



From the Producer.


Cool thanks. I should have asked earlier. Letter-from-Executive-Producer-Rob-Ciccolini-January-2018

[Mindos]

Since the change will only correct an exploit, there are no release notes. Thanks for your patience, and we'll see you back in the game soon!

I can't wait for the TWO second swapping delay!

[HuneyMunster]

I can't wait for the TWO second swapping delay!

I can't wait either as swapping to scrolls doesn't feel clunky enough yet since last patch.

Also since the last patch noticing my spells not doing anything when casting fast after a previous spell cast. This is especially noticeable when casting crushing despair followed by mass hold monster on my sorcerer.

[Erokir]

I can't wait for the TWO second swapping delay!

Is the current delay permanent?

That would seriously suck.

It's super annoying and has no upside in terms of enjoying the game.

[Memnir]

[cmecu]

Is the current delay permanent?

That would seriously suck.

It's super annoying and has no upside in terms of enjoying the game.

The delay would seem realistic to me.. I mean how fast does a person think they would put away one item in their hand, then hurry and grab another item from their backpack, put it in their hand, cast it.. then put it back away, then get your original hand item back in your hand.. Two second delay seems quite fine

[OfElectricMen]

Hi!

The delay would seem realistic to me..

If "realism" or something being "realistic" is your benchmark, you're playing the wrong game.

That said, retrieving a stored item is a Move Action that provokes an AoO, so, in my estimation, that should take about 3 seconds.

Of course, a Trip is a standard action, so that should only have a cooldown of about 3 seconds also. Since that's not the case, there's a well-established precedent for ignoring the normal time frame for actions, ergo, no actual cooldown between switching items.

[OrodelaSol]

What was exploit? just curious since i never use them out of some warped sense of fair play... since it's gone np discussing it right?

[Erokir]

The delay would seem realistic to me.. I mean how fast does a person think they would put away one item in their hand, then hurry and grab another item from their backpack...

So, you're saying that as your fantasy elf character is leaping 20 feet at a time, sailing through the air, shooting fire and lightning bolts from his hands and so forth, that it ruins the realism if he's able to switch items too quickly? And you feel that this fantastical, magic-based game is more "realistic" if we players are made to wait a longer interval each and every time before can we swap gear to search for control boxes, disable traps and otherwise resume game play?

I do understand what you're getting at, but the cat's obviously out of the bag in terms of realism. Making the playing experience enjoyable has to come first. Realism can come second. And the delay is definitely not enjoyable in any way. So, if you need a reason for why our magical characters are able to switch items so fast, just imagine that the swapping alacrity, if you will, is simply a magical ability that every character acquired—just like being able to run and fight with limitless energy, never needing a drop of water nor a morsel of food—sometime before they washed ashore on Korthos. We all met a wizard before we washed up on Korthos, and he gave us the ability to swap items really fast. There ya go.

[baimpala]

So, you're saying that as your fantasy elf character is leaping 20 feet at a time, sailing through the air, shooting fire and lightning bolts from his hands and so forth, that it ruins the realism if he's able to switch items too quickly? And you feel that this fantastical, magic-based game is more "realistic" if we players are made to wait a longer interval each and every time before can we swap gear to search for control boxes, disable traps and otherwise resume game play?

I do understand what you're getting at, but the cat's obviously out of the bag in terms of realism. Making the playing experience enjoyable has to come first. Realism can come second. And the delay is definitely not enjoyable in any way. So, if you need a reason for why our magical characters are able to switch items so fast, just imagine that the swapping alacrity, if you will, is simply a magical ability that every character acquired—just like being able to run and fight with limitless energy, never needing a drop of water nor a morsel of food—sometime before they washed ashore on Korthos. We all met a wizard before we washed up on Korthos, and he gave us the ability to swap items really fast. There ya go.

This. I love this so much. Perfectly said.

Bam

[Treok]

The DDO Game Servers will be brought down on Wednesday, January 31st from 6:00 AM - 2:00 PM Eastern (-5 GMT) for maintenance and an update to the game. Since the change will only correct an exploit, there are no release notes. Thanks for your patience, and we'll see you back in the game soon!

The development is practicing security through obscurity. Found a great definition here,"Security Through Obscurity (STO) is the belief that a system of any sort can be secure so long as nobody outside of its implementation group is allowed to find out anything about its internal mechanisms. ... Once the secret gets out, that is the end of your security." It looks like the development team doesn't have a lot of confidence they fixed the exploit, and they are trying to hide what it is. If they release what the exploit is and they failed to fix it with the patch, the door is open. Last week, they attempted to fix this problem and it looks like they failed. Here is a quote from last week's Thursday downtime:

Notes: This downtime will be for extended OS and server maintenance, in addition to a small game update. The update will include a fix to an issue that was causing degraded game client performance, in addition to several exploit fixes, which we will not be providing further information about. !

Every game, application, operating system etc has exploits and vulnerabilities. I'm cool with that. Why even communicate you are patching an exploit if you aren't going to expose the exploit? Sure, ddo is buying time if the patch doesn't fix the exploit. Why not just announce there is a server restart? The downtime announcement frustrates people you're giving a half answer when they see other problems in the game. Maybe announcing you are trying to fix an exploit encourages, not discourages people to look for them.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Why even communicate you are patching an exploit if you aren't going to expose the exploit?

Because they usually put out some form of release notes. This patch will not have release notes. We would keep bugging Cordovan for release notes if he didn't actively say that there were no release notes because it's to fix an exploit.