Self catering of players and the wilderness at DDO

[Kutalp]

Hello. What is a self catering gameplay ?



-Taking the idea of giant wilderness map instances of FR and RL to full open or semi open questing grounds.
-Randomised npc and surprise events pop up travelling the map.
-Better AI for npcs that aim weak sides of players. Traps, hit and runs. Luring and baiting giving extra options for players for extra xp but also higher chance of failure at survival.
-No power ups
-Gear break much faster without repair.
-Exhaustion result of swinging weapons similar to casting spells.
-No more tanking and lowering the effectiveness of gear.
-Instant entry and and exit causing rentry to sending the player appearing at a random spot.
-Adding more survival effect at these instances. Revamping older classes according to this virtureal environment. No power creep.
-No more teaming up before entering the instances. Team up virtually at the map asking for a meeting spot by instant chat/shout.
-No more level and xp restrictions. (Higher level parties summon higher level predators) Live or die adventuring with random parties. Help, get help. Be the bait or whatever.
-Sell safe housing option with points to players including pvp busting action and entry-Optional pvp and banking (This is optional but I am sure will pull powerplayers sneak on each other for fun)


Please post your valuable opinons.

[Discpsycho]

-Randomised npc and surprise events pop up travelling the map.

These already exist in newer wilderness zones, but sure. The easiest and most reasonable part

-Better AI for npcs that aim weak sides of players. Traps, hit and runs. Luring and baiting giving extra options for players for extra xp but also higher chance of failure at survival.

"Weak sides" is super subjective - is the AI going to choose spells / effects based on your lesser saves? Traps disproportionately affect melee. Regardless, I would imagine this would be super hard to implement, as humans are a lot better at learning workaround tactics than a game can be at spontaneously implementing new ones

-No power ups

As in...?

-Gear break much faster without repair.

You mean make gear un-repairable? I can't see why anyone would ever play this mode for fear of breaking their "+500 Sword of Ubervorpal" with which they raid. If you want your gear to break faster, roll an Acrobat; in high heroics my staves would break every quest or two

-Exhaustion result of swinging weapons similar to casting spells.

That defeats the purpose of non-casters. They already have finite resources called Action Boosts

-No more tanking and lowering the effectiveness of gear.

Aggro is already difficult enough to manage, this further skews the game in the direction of "CC is king", as well as eliminating party roles. Curious how you expect to lower gear effectiveness without lowering other features

-Instant entry and and exit causing rentry to sending the player appearing at a random spot.

Making it harder to group? Not sure why anyone would want this if NPC / event spawning is already random

-Adding more survival effect at these instances. Revamping older classes according to this virtureal environment. No power creep.

I'm not sure what you mean by the first and third parts. The second would be a lot of work and is already being undertaken outside of this environment

-No more teaming up before entering the instances. Team up virtually at the map asking for a meeting spot by instant chat/shout.

I can't see how this would be remotely beneficial. You have to be in a party to share kill credit / chests in wilderness, so people in different parties would be competing for loot

-No more level and xp restrictions. (Higher level parties summon higher level predators) Live or die adventuring with random parties. Help, get help. Be the bait or whatever.

Absolutely not. Gear / PLs / player knowledge / player preference create a huge range of "fun" difficulties. If there are difficulty zones and I spawn randomly, I may have to run through boring / hazardous zones to find the right area. If there aren't difficulty zones, absolutely not: my level 8 Wizard doesn't stand a chance against the same enemies as my 30 Rogue

-Sell safe housing option with points to players including pvp busting action and entry-Optional pvp and banking (This is optional but I am sure will pull powerplayers sneak on each other for fun)

This game is too complex and nowhere near balanced enough to incentivize PvP. I won't cite my sources but there are about a million threads pertaining to this in the PvP section.

TL;DR: Thanks, but no thanks. There are plenty of other games that do most of this (eg, WoW) and I can't see it working for DDO's system or being used by its player base

[Kutalp]

Dear Discpsycho.

Thank you very much for your kind respond. Good points there. I appreciate that. :

The questions you asked above under each statement about the general survival/wilderness instance is clearly understandable. The point about each protocol (?) is actually bringing a new effect that effects the player level, total level of the party, random encounter danger level.

Npc AI.

Example for additional tricks. Four Hobgoblins and five orcs agrees on inviting the wandering kobold shaman and his five lackeys to their ambush team. They do not patrol a certain spot or respawn. They do not wait at a said corridor to get slaughtered either. They have been watching the unprepared (and unclever) team of players that have no listen and not high enough spot checks. Just to note they have been watching the players from high ground while kobold lackeys set a trap low ground. They re up to take a player team. Dwarf rogue rolls a succesful spot somehow and realised the booby trap set at the narrow path. Dwarf rogue does a search check. Npcs release the wildboar they kept at cage towards the player team. When the dwarf does the search animation the wildboar stampedes roaming over the trap and headbutts rogue's side with its burning mane. Rogue panics and jumps sideways his foot is injured with the impact and his cape is burning. Another trap springs there and hits the elf wizard who assumed sideways were safe. Low reflex save. Too bad.

They almost certainly go for the wounded elf wizard and the dwarf rogue for extra racial damage bonus top of their casters cast hold, entangle , ghoul touch on them. Orc and Hobgoblin champions wait up the rocks to hang down with the ropes to block the way between the main targets and player human paladin and Aasimar cleric. These Ravager guys all use humanoid bane weapon of evil. Meanwhile, the Human Barbarian is trying to stand on Sleeting storm while kobold shaman is constantly sending magic missiles at him. The burning boar dives in to the mess and interrupts the Aasimar cleric's healing chant. Bumping the palading backwards towards the rocky wall. Ravager champions dive in with the advantage.

- Aim lowest hp class. Aim the race with extra damage bonus. Avoid contact before setting the trap. 'Gather your npc party before venturing forth'. Keep moving and hide and seek targeting the nearest and lowest hp target. Summon beasts from local habitat to misslead and surprise the player team. Focus fire and swarm player target before possible retreat.


Exhaustion effects comparable to the time and activity spent without a rest, elemental (?) micro climate effects. Exhausting heat, chilling winds, damp environment, deep mud after the rain. (Wider effects comparable to elemental traps that cant be disabled but partially bareable through equipment or buffs; again player skills ve items about dodging or finding a shelter or simply avoiding contact).

Power creep/Power up resembles item power and class/destiny power combined effects.No more xp/level restricitons is to aid a team of players to use weaker players as bait/missleading element (?); while stronger or more skilled ones handle/trap the said npc or threat first hand. The xp shared or gained has no limitations/penalties over or under certain level. Roles are delivered by party roles instead of class roles. Risk is allways there. Meanwhile every man counts for the survival.

The longer the time spent at the survival instance; the higher xp rewards gained. Different parties sharing the same instance. Indeed. Anyhow random party ups and random spawn locations assure certain teams can not dominate the place over and over again. The stronger the party, the shinier loot they become for the wise npc hunters. Naturally soloability of this type of instance with rewards is zero percent. Meanwhile it is not a barrier between a survival expert and aim for exploration. Each run brings a new map (may be with a count down for every three hours, six hours ?)

This optional instance is not just to any type of player, level or skill degree. It is an unjust setting with full of surprises and focuses at exploration and instant rewards through survival of the luckiest ?

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Sadly there's no F2P Wilderness since Ataraxia's Heaven.
Unfortunately in general most wilderness areas are even high-level.

I'd just LOVE to see a low to mid level F2P Wilderness with current graphics. I mean, all low-level wilderness areas don't have a look like areas since the MOTU era (Eveningstar style - I can't visit the wilderness areas there because I don't have any high-level character so far).

[droid327]

Wilderness areas, I think, are a huge piece of low-hanging fruit for devs. A simple Wilderness pass could breathe new life into a whole swath of existing content, and rescue what's a fun and unique gameplay style that complements dungeon-crawling well.

That being said, I dont think any of these suggestions quite address the problem with WAs. They're already fun. They just need to be worthwhile and challenging:

- Introduce difficulty scaling for WAs, so that they're not total facerolls for well-prepared characters. Maybe not even Reaper, but at least up through Elite. Just scaling the monster stats would be sufficient, and then tweak up the boss spawn rate proportionally, dont even need higher XP rewards.

- Add a small set of Slayer objectives (e.g. 25, 50, 100, 250) that reset daily and compare to quests at similar level in terms of XP/min. These would be in addition to the permanent per-life Slayers. This would give daily replayability for WAs instead of making them largely once-per-life and just "take what you can get on your way to dungeons". They'd also reward you slightly for having to run out to dungeons, on maps where there's no teleport NPC. That'd be a big incentive to run more Vale and Sands quests, even King's Forest.

[Kutalp]

Dear Alrik_Fassbauer and droid327. Thank you very much for the valuable input.

I agree.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

- Add a small set of Slayer objectives (e.g. 25, 50, 100, 250) that reset daily and compare to quests at similar level in terms of XP/min. These would be in addition to the permanent per-life Slayers. This would give daily replayability for WAs instead of making them largely once-per-life and just "take what you can get on your way to dungeons". They'd also reward you slightly for having to run out to dungeons, on maps where there's no teleport NPC. That'd be a big incentive to run more Vale and Sands quests, even King's Forest.

For some wilderness areas I doubt I'll ever be able to get to THAT slayer count ... At one point it's too much of a grind to me (I'm not against grind per se, but imho it's a question of feasible grind and "too much grind" ... ) ...
Like in Tangleroot Gorge ... 1500 ? For each character ? Not account wide ? Seriously ? How many have achieved that ?

On the other hand, however, I must admit that slayer counts located that high are a selling point for slayer boosts ... And DDO needs to get some sort of income or it will perish ...

Account-wide slayer counts would be nice ... A bit like in the monster manual ...

[Lonnbeimnech]

Sounds like a completely different game.

Pro Tip: You can just go play another game.

[droid327]

For some wilderness areas I doubt I'll ever be able to get to THAT slayer count ... At one point it's too much of a grind to me (I'm not against grind per se, but imho it's a question of feasible grind and "too much grind" ... ) ...
Like in Tangleroot Gorge ... 1500 ? For each character ? Not account wide ? Seriously ? How many have achieved that ?

On the other hand, however, I must admit that slayer counts located that high are a selling point for slayer boosts ... And DDO needs to get some sort of income or it will perish ...

Account-wide slayer counts would be nice ... A bit like in the monster manual ...

I think that's only really a problem for the Heroic WAs. Epic ones you can keep building as you ETR. Honestly if players arent hitting the final slayer count, I'm fine with that, as long as the others are spaced out more reasonably. The highest ones are really more for bragging rights anyway since the XP per kill is already junk-level past the first few slayers. Which is another reason I proposed Daily Slayers, give you a worthwhile reason to visit the WAs more than once per life.

Account-wide slayers would just turn into a way to twink low level characters I think. Prime a milestone on your L30 and then switch to your L1 for the last kill. Also people would complain that you cant reset them ever, so it'd be one-and-done. Even the MM resets on TR, its not account based.

Also I think Daily Slayers would sell a lot of Slayer Boosts too, especially the short-term ones. It'd essentially be a second layer of XP Pots, pop one and do an hour of Daily Slayers going from zone to zone.

[Memnir]

In another game, this sounds like it might be interesting.
In DDO, it sounds like it would be drudgery.

[Kutalp]

As for playing another Dungeons and dragons based online mmo game. Is there any other game that can compete DDO ?...No.

After all these years, DDO is one of my most favorite mmos ever. With no competition (for myself) as a D&D based mmo, it is certainly top. Can DDO be even better ? I believe so.

These type of posts are half brainstorming, half suggestion. For sure not all of these can turn real...At least soon. Afterall, the good hopes and wishes about the game and chit chat with other DDO players at forums is still fun. One of the main reasons I hold on to DDO. The community is never brain dead.

I wish you all a good game. Thank you very much for all your valuble comments.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

I always love these pictures. So long ago one Carl Sagan once wrote that perhaps early people thought that these bright little things in the night sky are just other campfires ...

[Bjond]

Hello. What is a self catering gameplay

I think you need to find a different word there. For English speakers, "self catering" would literally mean "self serving" or "selfish". A lot of your ideas seem more in line with an attempt at a more realistic simulation rather than a more selfish play style. Most have also been done before many times in other games. Very few would work in DDO.

-Taking the idea of giant wilderness map instances of FR and RL to full open or semi open questing grounds.
-Randomised npc and surprise events pop up travelling the map.

EQ1. GW2. Aion. ESO. All have that in various forms. It can work, but it's vastly different than DDO.

-Better AI for npcs that aim weak sides of players. Traps, hit and runs. Luring and baiting giving extra options for players for extra xp but also higher chance of failure at survival.

AI is hard. Tricky behavior only works once versus a human. Then it has to change to remain tricky. Simple tricks becom annoying, like kobolds jumping around to force melee to chase them. Effective tactics work, but if you make them too effective, it can eliminate diversity; eg. I hacked old Baldur's Gate AI to teach NPCs to Focus Fire (all archer's would pick same target then move to next). It uh, worked too well. The only class that could live was a Thief or Thief multiclass and only because it could sneak into range and get first strike without dying. Everything else died in one round. Yay, go FMT!

-No power ups

Not quite sure what you mean by this. Taken literally, it also means no skill synergy. FFXI renkei is still the gold standard for team synergy and was fantastically fun. GW2 does a fair job with it's short range skill and aura style of buffing nearby teammates, too. Most other MMOs just leave it as long or short buffs. Kinda bland without them.

-Gear break much faster without repair.

UO. EQ1. Both did it. Abysmal failure for both. Learn from history or suffer the same fate.

No one will play the game. Not kidding. EQ1 tried a hefty decay at one point and people left in droves. They undid it and tried to get them back. Got a few, nowhere near all. Took years to recover. UO did this at the start, too. People either left or stayed logged in 24x7 with their chars in "bot" mode practising skills to keep them from decaying. They hemoraged people until they gave in and removed it, too. Kinda funny that EQ1 tried this AFTER UO without learning anything from them.

The golden rule / sacred cow of MMOs is this: never NEVER roll back progress. When players feel that their efforts are being stolen, they will simply leave and not come back. You just taught them that there is no point in progressing in your game. Any kind of decay or erosion of effort simply does not work in an MMO.

-Exhaustion result of swinging weapons similar to casting spells.

More resource management. Every single old-school MMO on the planet did this or does this. It's bad design and most games have or are moving away. Here's why: it's a game. Watching a resource bar is not as fun as watching the action. It's that simple. Watching the action does wonders for keeping people captivated and playing your game. Watching timers on buttons or meters fill up bores people. Bored people look for a way to not be bored. They find a new game.

Now, if you can find a UI-method of doing this that keeps people's attention on the action (not on a HUD over the action), then you might have something. Sound might work, but cuts out both the deaf market and those that like playing quietly.

-No more tanking and lowering the effectiveness of gear.

GW2 has no tanking. It works OK. DDO has almost no tanking. Same OK result. I've wanted this too, but when I say it, I mean "physics". I want shield walls and body blocking. You "tank" by walling up with others nearby to keep the nasties from encroaching on squishy ranged behind you. I like teamwork and that fits the bill for me AND ties into historical/realistic tactics, too. The nasties still want to target the squishies first, but can't because you're blocking them.

The entire agro/hate/enmity/taunt/intimidate mechanic that has been in nearly every MMO since EQ1 is an unbearable grotesque hack that should have left the industry long ago. Physics done wrong, though, is incredibly annoying. And, it's easy to get wrong.

-Instant entry and and exit causing rentry to sending the player appearing at a random spot.
-Adding more survival effect at these instances. Revamping older classes according to this virtureal environment. No power creep.

So, every class has to be a solo class in case it's dropped in a bad spot? Low/no teamwork? Why bother making an MMO?

Creep is essentially required. It's like inflation. A little is required. More is bad. A lot is horrid. However, for a nice way to deal with it, play FFXIV. They scale players to dungeons. A fully geared capped player IS stronger than an at-level, but only to the preset power-cap for that dungeon. The caps are such that you can't solo old content and old content is continually played by everyone. Their equivalent of a L30 R10 character would cheerfully group with a L5 newbie in a L5 group. The L5s earns L5 xp. The R10 earns R10 xp. The L5s gets an expert dungeon guide. The R10 gets a bonus for leading newbies. Best **** system I've seen for mixing levels and experience. Very fun. Very nice helpful newbie-friendly player culture purely as a result of this system.

This method can work in DDO, but it's a pretty big change. It would take careful balancing to get right.

-No more teaming up before entering the instances. Team up virtually at the map asking for a meeting spot by instant chat/shout.

Old school, no LFG tool. M59. UO. EQ1. FFXI. The industry has learned and moved on. Don't repeat old mistakes.

LFG tools were a HUGE leap ahead. I will never ever again play a game without an LFG tool because I remember shouting for groups in EQ1. Back then, we didn't know what bad was because it was so new. We know better now. Good social tools can make a bad game fun. Bad or missing ones will kill it. People play MMOs to play WITH other people. They like hanging out together and doing things together. The more social you make your game, the harder it is for people to leave it, too. Why? They like the people.

-No more level and xp restrictions. (Higher level parties summon higher level predators) Live or die adventuring with random parties. Help, get help. Be the bait or whatever.

GW2. They have a nifty ad-hoc leveling thing where people of vastly different levels can team up for wilderness events. It works fairly well, but players treat it as "fluff content". The good/serious players group for dungeons or pvp. The more serious they are about their play, the more effort they put into forming their groups in advance.

MMOs aim at retaining players by encouraging social play and by simulating progress. People don't like to leave because it means punting either friends or effort or both. Your proposed style of random groups only works when people want random. It works great as filler (eg. GW2 while LFG), but not as the only content.

-Sell safe housing option with points to players including pvp busting action and entry-Optional pvp and banking (This is optional but I am sure will pull powerplayers sneak on each other for fun)

If it's old school PvP (loot the dead like M59 & EQ1), people will do all kinds of things to keep their gear safe; eg. move it to alts if the bank isn't safe. This is what I did in M59. Safe has to be 100% safe or few will use it. It's like DCs in DDO. No one cares about abilities that "might" work. "Might" work is the definition of a loosing strategy. As fun as you think breaking in and looting a player's bank might be, you'll also not want that to happen to you and you will take whatever steps you can to prevent it.

If you want to make a game where people might leave valuables in an unsafe bank, add measures that positively identify the thief. This would be in line with many old PvP games where you might be able to kill people in town, but then your name turns red and guards and other players can now kill you with impunity (eg. M59). So, you can steal, but now you're a known thief and people get a bounty for hunting you down.

D&D itself won't work for PvP. It's the worst system on the planet for basing an MMO. It's got wonderful content and everyone has great memories of playing it, but the system is all kinds of broken. It's amazing that DDO has done as well as it has, but look at the balance issues here. We have differences in DPS output between basic supposedly supported DPS classes as great as 5x. This kind of imbalance would kill the game completely if it was PvP or make it unbearably boring with people only playing the 3 top builds.

If you want PvP, you need a game that's committed to constantly balancing PvP. GW2 and SWToR are the top ones in that regard that I've played. Avoid Aion. FFXIV PvP is fun and balanced, but the PvP game uses different abilities than PvE -- you can level a job to cap in PvP and step out into PvE without the slightest clue on how to play it. Haven't tried ESO. Tera is incredibly fun, but so ping dependent that PvP is almost just a simple test of who has the lowest ping.

Wow, long reply. You read all that? Congratulations. Have a cookie! Yeah, you can have one if you only read the last line, too.

[Kutalp]

Thank you very much for the time and respond. Wonderful criticization and brainstorming there. Yup read it all buddy.



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Alrik, Bjond. Please share the fire and the booze...Love y'all...Cheers !