Please improve DDO - Player Segregation and Inventory Nightmares

[boredGamer]

Hi, my main is Zehnpai. I like playing Zehnpai. I want to play Zehnpai. I also want to play with friends. But hey, I'll bite.

So on Monday night, John, Sally and Mark are on! We create new alts to play together since none of our mains are the same level. After a night of merry adventures, John, Sally, Mark and I are now all level 5.

Tuesday night, Sally can't make it, but Tim is on now! So we all created new alts. Another great night of great adventure and we get to level 8!

I now have alts at 5, 8 and my main is 30.

Wednesday rolls around. Sally again can't make it and Tim can't make it. It's just me, John and Mark. We decide to play the alts we made Monday. We are now level 10.

Thursday rolls around. Sally is on again and so it Tim! The whole gang is online! But oh man, we have some who are 5, some who are 8 and some are 10. Bummer. New alts time! We all get to level 3!

Friday night! Some people in my guild are doing ER GiantHold. I would love to join but I don't have any characters who are level 24. Tim is on though so we decide to play our characters that are level 8. However, a few hours later Sally logs on and wants to join us along with her husband Chris. We all roll new level 1 alts again!

----

It's now been 5 days and I have yet to play my main character who I enjoy playing the most. The "Just roll alts" argument is -awful- and has no practical use. Please stop using it as a counter. You're smarter than this Renvar.

Not even sure why this needed to be said. But, exactly.

[Renvar]

Hi, my main is Zehnpai. I like playing Zehnpai. I want to play Zehnpai. I also want to play with friends. But hey, I'll bite.

So on Monday night, John, Sally and Mark are on! We create new alts to play together since none of our mains are the same level. After a night of merry adventures, John, Sally, Mark and I are now all level 5.

Tuesday night, Sally can't make it, but Tim is on now! So we all created new alts. Another great night of great adventure and we get to level 8!

I now have alts at 5, 8 and my main is 30.

Wednesday rolls around. Sally again can't make it and Tim can't make it. It's just me, John and Mark. We decide to play the alts we made Monday. We are now level 10.

Thursday rolls around. Sally is on again and so it Tim! The whole gang is online! But oh man, we have some who are 5, some who are 8 and some are 10. Bummer. New alts time! We all get to level 3!

Friday night! Some people in my guild are doing ER GiantHold. I would love to join but I don't have any characters who are level 24. Tim is on though so we decide to play our characters that are level 8. However, a few hours later Sally logs on and wants to join us along with her husband Chris. We all roll new level 1 alts again!

----

It's now been 5 days and I have yet to play my main character who I enjoy playing the most. The "Just roll alts" argument is -awful- and has no practical use. Please stop using it as a counter. You're smarter than this Renvar.

And you know better too. False dichotomies abound in your example.

You had to intentionally move the level 5 alts to 10 to make Sally be left out the next time.

You and Mark and John on Wednesday could have split time between the two characters and only gotten the level 5's to level 8 and then advanced the 8's to level 10. That way you have characters at 8 and 10 and only Sally is behind at 5, but everyone has a level 8 or 5 and can run together. Mainly focusing on getting Sally caught up. So bang Fire Caves and Delera's Part 2 like a screen door in a hurricane. She will gain 3 levels to your 2 easily. Especially if she is getting first time bonuses and you aren't. She might get to 8 while you are still midway thru 9. There is also this cool concept called "holding a level". Maybe you have heard of it.

Lots of ways to manage this situation without having to roll new alts non-stop. Some common sense goes a long way.

[boredGamer]

Not really. For one thing if someone is already grossly above your gear level, it really doesn't matter past a certain point. Whether someone is doing 10x your dps or 15x your dps, around 3x your dps is where you stopped keeping track anyways. We already have a feeling useless issue. We also have a "It's really hard to group with friends outside of keeping a stable of 20 alts" issue.

If we start working on solving the "I want to group with friends but can't because of arbitrary barriers in DDO" issue, the "I'm in way over my head" issue starts to lessen as well since you can do fun stuff with friends instead of the only option available to you is to join the posted LFM for R3 quests when you can barely manage hard.

Beyond that the idea is to show that de-leveling tech already exists in DDO. It wouldn't take much to tweak it to work. Some cooldown penalties to offset having more abilities to use and scale down of stats and you're good to go. So the issue would be even less.

All it takes is a little imagination.

Look - again, I don't care. I'm totally happy to pike a 15x powerful toon if I can finish 10 levels in a gaming session. I'll open doors the whole time for them.

And I agree it would help the grouping with friends thing - which I fully support.

But don't pretend the 15x power guy is going to be going into heroic *hard* to support their heroic-hard-capable-buddy and not just absolutely wipe the floor with the quest. I'm happy with that happening, but you'll still be in a situation where one of the two people is going to be fairly bored (and perhaps both of them). Unless of course they are playing in R3, and that is exactly what you're saying is prevented above. And of course you're going to now just have alt accounts (capped warlock) for power levelling 1-20 other toons. Which, again, I am all for, but don't pretend it won't happen.

If you really stripped out all abilities down to a certain level, all reaper points, all enhancements (not sure how you'd select with enhancements you could keep), all feats, all gear (not sure how this would work - just not have the gear on? have to put other gear on ?) - then it would be reasonable. But as others have said, between "just give 10 neg. levels" and complete strip-down lies a lot of work.

Again, I'm ALL FOR THIS, just pointing out the challenges, both with community and technical.

[Saekee]

Please remove the alphabetical listing of the quest names with 'THE' in the beginning. Half the time I cannot recall if a quest is listed as "THE" first or not. Is it, "Relic of a Sovereign Past" or "The Relic of a Sovereign Past?" SHOULDN'T THIS BE REALLY EASY TO DO?!!!??!?!?!

even fixing the LFM interface should not be too hard. It is the definition of mediocrity and we are just habituated to how bad it is. Things that can be eliminated or have their window merged/greatly reduced:

1. preferred classes. Does anyone intentionally shutout other classes when they post an LFM? This is a vestige of past times. Just get rid of it, or make it veiled. It does not need to be in the LFM panel.
2. Have the difficulty that the person has selected appear in the LFM. Especially if IP. I have joined quests with new players and they are in on normal or hard. I apologized, wished them GL and departed. That did not feel good for anyone. If instead the LFM actually listed the setting that you clicked, we all could have avoided the bad date. Or even PM the leader and let them know that you can open on elite or R, and handle it to help them, etc. It is information, no? Info is good. It lets you make informed decisions. (informed and info have the same root!!! OMG!!!)
3. As mentioned in the OP, the quest range should be adjusted automatically for the difficulty setting for BB and reaper lockout/penalties. So if you select a level 12 quest on reaper, your lfm goes 10-12 automatically; if it is 12 on elite, then etc. etc.
4. I would add the stars symbol next to the LFM poster to indicate if it is a first life toon, second or third. Hero, champ legend whatever. That tells you something right away about the poster and sometimes what to expect. If I know a first-lifer has posted an LFM on elite for a tough dungeon, I might join just to help them out.
5. Add a text note saying: "If no names appear in the panel, make sure to load the players in the other tab; click HERE to do so" so that the five or six new players to the game will not get deterred. That is USER FRIENDLY STUFF THAT IS EASY TO DO!!!!

[dragons1ayer74]

Thanks everyone for the great feedback so far.

This was not or is not meant to be an all or nothing list and certainly most of these ideas are not original.

A few areas of discussion on player segregation the biggest thing that I want to do is to play with my friends! Currently alts don’t work well if I want to progress them as even with 40 character slots they all end up in the 12 to 30 range and inevitable one of my friends will logon (casual or hard core) and want to play a level 1 to 8 character and I have nothing in that range I do not want to delete and recreate a character and even if I can or did by the time I get into game we have lost a large chunk of play time.

I have played in a static group and enjoyed it but don’t anymore. For a lot of people static groups don't work as we all have different schedules and play styles but sometime between 1 and 5 friends could be on at the same time and I want us all to be able to play together with the characters we want to play with.

My point on lockout has nothing to do with power leveling it is me bringing in a strong main character solo or in a group to a higher-level chain. Example 1 I head to tangle root at level 3 I want to do the whole chain somewhere along the line I can’t continue even if I want to because the quest is to high level…let me decide that. I am not asking to be able to go into epic level quest at heroic level I am asking for the lockout for the epic level player that is in my party to be negated so we can be in the same party on voice chat and at very least visit while we run our separate quests and link in loot through party chat and they can continue to enter the quest they want to without having to drop the group go into the quest or explorer area and then rejoin the party.

Power-gap disparity is an entirely different conversation.

Overall I don’t think we are in maintenance and I do think most if not all of SSG employees do care but at the same time they have a job to do and have project priorities. Also I think they are aware of these issues.

[zehnvhex]

Again, I'm ALL FOR THIS, just pointing out the challenges, both with community and technical.

Gotchya.

I made a pretty lengthy post about the subject and there's a myriad of ways it could be done. The technical limitations are usually what get you though. I'm personally a fan of snapshotting. It'd be nice if you could take a 'snapshot' of your character, storing a max of 1 per level or whatever, at any given level and then you can mentor to that level at any given time when joining a group. That way even if you're level 6, you could 'mentor' a group of level 23's by loading up the snapshot of yourself you took when you were playing a fighter/wizard hybrid you really enjoyed.

Imagine how much more lively the level cap game would be if while you were working on your 13th racial at level 6 you could push a button and be back to level 30. Then after you join some friends doing gianthold at 24, then you join a pug doing shadow crypt at 9, then go back to your character who is now almost level 7.

Of course something like that is a pipe dream at best and a ludicrous fantasy more likely. I mean they can't even facilitate server merges and the last time they tried messing with the banking UI it nearly broke the game. I'm not holding out hope they'll ever institute something as ambitious as mentoring.

[dragons1ayer74]

Another annoyance although not as big still a "pita". When we do an epic TR why not have an option to have the lesser TR as is or do an Epic and Heroic to go from level 30 to level 1 or at very least have an option to auto level me back up to 20 in character I will not play so I can turn around and get to level 1 again as soon as possible.

[Algreg]

Improve this game is not a goal for the t@rds in charge of it.

They just care to suck all money as possible from it no caring with quality or fun alt all.

I am a bit disappointed in you. Your troll skills are really slacking with your latest incarnation. Formerly, you antagonized, annoyed and incited anger while adhering to the rules by the letter. That was enjoyable to watch. Now you just resort to boring insults. That is some lazy trolling, it is way too easy to ban you after just one or a few posts. Remember, clicking the ban button is less effort than creating yet another account, you do not want the joke to be on you I sincerly hope you will manage to get back to your former level.

Yours truly
a concerned fan.

[Thrudh]

The game is obviously in unofficial maintenance mode

This is probably the dumbest thing I've read here in a while.

You post this a couple of days after they drop a new update with new content, and new enhancement trees? 4 months after they released a paid expansion pack that apparently did very well?

Do you even know what maintenance mode means?

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

The game is obviously in unofficial maintenance mode - unless they can make immediate profits from something they won't make an investment in the game. The game will continue to be a few packs per year and an expansion every now and then which is mostly just a beefed up pack. Otto's boxes on sale every few months. That is the future of DDO. Once profit starts to approach 0 they will shut it down and focus on lotro.

This is dangerous for people NEW to DDO to read. The game is run by a new set of rules, and a smaller but more dedicated group of developers that TAKE OWNERSHIP because in a very real way they DO OWN the game.

So they put out content in a way that makes more sense for a small development house yet in a way that will be attractive to the DDO playerbase. (We want A LOT OF STUFF every update, that takes time and skill and money)

BOTTOM LINE: They are very active every single day developing content for DDO. They are NOWHERE NEAR maintenance mode. They are creating content daily. And there is true focus on DDO in SSG, its not lost in the ATARI or WB ZOO of PC and console and mobile game divisions with budgets controlled by bean counters the DDO developers NEVER ACTUALLY MET. It's 2018, and the game is still being developed -- let's CELEBRATE THAT.

[Dragavon]

This is probably the dumbest thing I've read here in a while.

You post this a couple of days after they drop a new update with new content, and new enhancement trees? 4 months after they released a paid expansion pack that apparently did very well?

Do you even know what maintenance mode means?

Well said.

[FestusHood]

Hi, my main is Zehnpai. I like playing Zehnpai. I want to play Zehnpai. I also want to play with friends. But hey, I'll bite.

So on Monday night, John, Sally and Mark are on! We create new alts to play together since none of our mains are the same level. After a night of merry adventures, John, Sally, Mark and I are now all level 5.

Tuesday night, Sally can't make it, but Tim is on now! So we all created new alts. Another great night of great adventure and we get to level 8!

I now have alts at 5, 8 and my main is 30.

Wednesday rolls around. Sally again can't make it and Tim can't make it. It's just me, John and Mark. We decide to play the alts we made Monday. We are now level 10.

Thursday rolls around. Sally is on again and so it Tim! The whole gang is online! But oh man, we have some who are 5, some who are 8 and some are 10. Bummer. New alts time! We all get to level 3!

Friday night! Some people in my guild are doing ER GiantHold. I would love to join but I don't have any characters who are level 24. Tim is on though so we decide to play our characters that are level 8. However, a few hours later Sally logs on and wants to join us along with her husband Chris. We all roll new level 1 alts again!

----

It's now been 5 days and I have yet to play my main character who I enjoy playing the most. The "Just roll alts" argument is -awful- and has no practical use. Please stop using it as a counter. You're smarter than this Renvar.

The level 5 and 8 characters can play together, as can the level 8 and 10 characters. As to the problems with you having no character that is exactly level 24 for that perfect reaper bonus, that is your own fault for choosing such a myopic playstyle.

[Niminae]

An issue with scaing down (or up) is that xp in DDO is extremely influenced by first time bonusses. So even if I could "level down" to run with friends I would most likely already have run those quests and thus get far less xp. I see no way to reasonably fix this that would not lead to other issues

I'm not sure why you're at all concerned about earning XP while leveling down your character to mentor your friends. Either accept the XP you get and roll on or they could even just make earning XP impossible while a character is in this state.

The "side kick" leveling up is something I don't think should be implemented in any case, and if they didn't then there would be no issues with XP and up-leveled characters. Or again just make earning XP impossible in this state as a means to avoid potential exploits.

But I don't expect any dev hours to be put towards either up-leveling or down-leveling a character for "mentoring," because a simple work-around already exists: Mentor your friend's new character with one of your own. There are a number of options available for this, since any vet has the ability to create a character at levels 1, 4, 7, and 15. And a new Iconic can be halted at any level between 1 and 15. Or you can TR a capped character to 1 or 15, or ER one to 20th. If a person can't find the means to mentor a friend with all of these options available to them, maybe they just don't have much enthusiasm for the prospect.

The "Just roll alts" argument is -awful- and has no practical use.

Sounds more like you're not really invested in mentoring your friends. Because if you have to invent a completely specious line of argument about alts which would apply exactly the same if you and your friends each only wanted to play your one and only favorite characters, then you have already admitted that you just don't care about running with those friends.

[mikarddo]

I'm not sure why you're at all concerned about earning XP while leveling down your character to mentor your friends. Either accept the XP you get and roll on or they could even just make earning XP impossible while a character is in this state.

The "side kick" leveling up is something I don't think should be implemented in any case, and if they didn't then there would be no issues with XP and up-leveled characters. Or again just make earning XP impossible in this state as a means to avoid potential exploits.

But I don't expect any dev hours to be put towards either up-leveling or down-leveling a character for "mentoring," because a simple work-around already exists: Mentor your friend's new character with one of your own. There are a number of options available for this, since any vet has the ability to create a character at levels 1, 4, 7, and 15. And a new Iconic can be halted at any level between 1 and 15. Or you can TR a capped character to 1 or 15, or ER one to 20th. If a person can't find the means to mentor a friend with all of these options available to them, maybe they just don't have much enthusiasm for the prospect.



Sounds more like you're not really invested in mentoring your friends. Because if you have to invent a completely specious line of argument about alts which would apply exactly the same if you and your friends each only wanted to play your one and only favorite characters, then you have already admitted that you just don't care about running with those friends.

It seems you are missing the point I and some others are trying to make or maybe you are not interested in understanding it.
What we want to be able to is to make meaningful progress and play with whoever of our friends are logged in when we are.

In games where you play at cap almost exclusively thats far less of an issue because you are always at the same level.
In DDO its much more of an issue because you are almost always at different levels and because of the huge first time bonusses to xp which makes rerunning the same quest far less efficient.

I am not taking about mentoring at all - but about having fun which would by far be best served if I could play with friends while also making meaningful progress.

You are obviously free to want something else but that does not change what I would like.

At any rate - account shared RXP and Racial PL would go along way towards this. Not perfect, but a long way. (Only allow racial past lives earned by characters with atleast 2 heroic lives to count to prevent abuse).

[Chai]

Unfortunately, its not that easy. A ranged build with IPS thats level drained still has access to IPS. A level 15 Feind Warlock thats drained a few levels still has access to Hurl. Level drained is not even remotely that same as being that lower level.

Not necessarily true, as the game already has the tech to know what AP and feats you took, and precisely when they were taken. We know this because if you do a feat swap and try to swap a feat that is a pre-req for another feat the game will not let you do this. The tech already exists for DDO to scale exactly how you built the character.

[Kaboom2112]

We had a great expansion at the end of last year and we're still gonna see 4 updates in 2018. The talks of maintenance mode are just dumb, you shouldn't bring that up as it gives the whiteknights too much fodder to dismiss valid points.

[Chai]

I'm not sure why you're at all concerned about earning XP while leveling down your character to mentor your friends. Either accept the XP you get and roll on or they could even just make earning XP impossible while a character is in this state.

The "side kick" leveling up is something I don't think should be implemented in any case, and if they didn't then there would be no issues with XP and up-leveled characters. Or again just make earning XP impossible in this state as a means to avoid potential exploits.

But I don't expect any dev hours to be put towards either up-leveling or down-leveling a character for "mentoring," because a simple work-around already exists: Mentor your friend's new character with one of your own. There are a number of options available for this, since any vet has the ability to create a character at levels 1, 4, 7, and 15. And a new Iconic can be halted at any level between 1 and 15. Or you can TR a capped character to 1 or 15, or ER one to 20th. If a person can't find the means to mentor a friend with all of these options available to them, maybe they just don't have much enthusiasm for the prospect.

The people hours argument doesnt really apply here, as content devs can still push out new content while system devs could work on scaling characters.

The "farming the same quests for XP" argument also doesnt apply due to the huge bonus we get for first time runs, along with XP ransack. For instance, people who would farm shadow crypt and von 3 & 5 if this happened, already farm shadow crypt and von 3 & 5 to ransack. Would they then wait two days for ransack to clear just to farm the same quest, or do they just move on and play new quests for first time bonus like they do right now?

Besides the "mentoring friends" reason for doing this, it allows everyone to play with everyone else. The entire LFM pool is no longer split into a three level range, and it also means quests tdont have to be run in specific and exact orders to net first time bonus. It solves the bravery bonus not being in sync with reaper bonus issue, by always having people play at the level of the quest, regardless of their character's actual level.

[Niminae]

It seems you are missing the point I and some others are trying to make or maybe you are not interested in understanding it.
What we want to be able to is to make meaningful progress and play with whoever of our friends are logged in when we are.

In games where you play at cap almost exclusively thats far less of an issue because you are always at the same level.
In DDO its much more of an issue because you are almost always at different levels and because of the huge first time bonusses to xp which makes rerunning the same quest far less efficient.

I am not taking about mentoring at all - but about having fun which would by far be best served if I could play with friends while also making meaningful progress.

You are obviously free to want something else but that does not change what I would like.

At any rate - account shared RXP and Racial PL would go along way towards this. Not perfect, but a long way. (Only allow racial past lives earned by characters with atleast 2 heroic lives to count to prevent abuse).

Seems like you're the one missing the point. Mentoring was in the OP. If you missed it here it is for your convenience:

• Mentoring System : Allow me to play any character scaled up or down in power so I can play with my friends and still progress and contribute

If you want to take the thread in a different direction, you might get better traction starting your own thread so that you aren't speaking at cross-purposes to the intent of this thread.

The people hours argument doesnt really apply here, as content devs can still push out new content while system devs could work on scaling characters.

Of course it does. Any hours spent on a project are hours taken away from other projects. This is so simple I'm really surprised anyone would bother to try to contradict it.

Also, the DDO devs have a long and well documented history of allowing bugs to stand for long periods of time if there is any kind of a work-around for them, no matter how inconvenient the work-around might be for the players. And this isn't even a bug that needs to be fixed, it's a feature request. So when I say that I don't see SSG spending any dev time providing a way to down- or up-level a character to play with others when there are already in place many different ways to play a character within a specific level range, I'm speaking from the point of view of history as opposed to opinion.

[Chai]

Of course it does. Any hours spent on a project are hours taken away from other projects. This is so simple I'm really surprised anyone would bother to try to contradict it.

Also, the DDO devs have a long and well documented history of allowing bugs to stand for long periods of time if there is any kind of a work-around for them, no matter how inconvenient the work-around might be for the players. And this isn't even a bug that needs to be fixed, it's a feature request. So when I say that I don't see SSG spending any dev time providing a way to down- or up-level a character to play with others when there are already in place many different ways to play a character within a specific level range, I'm speaking from the point of view of history as opposed to opinion.

So what are system devs needed for if they are not developing a system?

You see the people hours argument sounds simple, until the understanding sinks in that devs dont all have the same area of expertise. Content devs dont do system devs work and vice versa. Do you have a list of specific system bugs you feel need to be fixed before they fix the games grouping issues?

Your reply suggests it hasnt been done yet, but it has. The game already knows the specific order feats and AP are taken in. I too, am speaking from the viewpoint of factual history, and not opinion. Much of this work people are advocating against without any real reason, is already done.

[TheOnly_LightInDark]

TR Cache rollover gets my vote. Every life its the same waste of 1-3 hours trying to clear it out.

I have 14 characters and 12 of them are mainly mules just to hold stuff.

Just allow me to tick a box that says role over and save the time I will pay you for the privilege. Or allow it to role over but charge when I bring items out for use.