A Look Ahead - Producer's Letter January 2020

[SirValentine]

the level cap increase

So, confirmed, not just some weird new trick to "push past" 30, but an actual higher-than-30 level.

Well, the idea that you're happy to destroy any existing endgame is confirmed, again.

[die]

"As we gaze further into the second half of the year, we are thrilled to share news about our next expansion, which will see players travel into the mystical plane of the Feywild! Joining characters on their trip will be our next new player character race: the Shifter, capable of temporarily embracing their bestial aspects to rend enemies and survive. Another thing we can say today about our upcoming Feywild expansion is that you will need to learn new, powerful ways to overcome challenge, and doing so will gain you the experience necessary to push past level 30 for the first time in DDO history."

Here is what Im reading... now bear with me, the level 30 thingy im seeing here is this, WE WILL BECOME GOD! no level 31... we complete the quest get the item and we become GOD'S

This is where we increase past level 30!!

Its only logical that godhood is the next step in a epic characters life!

[Katalissa]

This is not meant to be vague or uncertain. We are increasing the level cap.

Even though almost no-one wants it? Something like 90% of the player response has been negative, for very valid reasons. Yet I'm sure you will bulldoze through with eyes and ears wide shut, like every other time, almost as though running a successful business involves not only NOT listening to your customers, but actively attempting to infuriate them...

[Sam-u-r-eye]

Internally we have gone through a few different drafts of the specifics of how we are going to implement this. We believe that what we have settled on currently is the structure of what we'll be putting together, however, work has just begun on actually implementing this and it remains to be seen what unforeseen issue will occur that will require us to pivot and alter course on specifics. The point is, we are ready to announce that we are increasing the level cap with the release of our next expansion pack but are not yet ready to give specifics on the structure.

This is not meant to be vague or uncertain. We are increasing the level cap. We are simply not yet at the stage in development where it is ready for full public details. Much like the feywild content itself. We are going to release an expansion pack that takes players to the Feywild. We have, internally, mapped out a design document detailing what players will do there and rough layouts of both the narrative and quest design but have only just begun implementing said pieces and aren't ready to speak more on the feature other than to let you all know ahead of time that the feature is planned and coming.

Don't mistake this clarification for me attempting to dissuade you all from telling us what your priorities and concerns with the upcoming features are. Please do give feedback on the side effects that you are concerned about with anything announced in the letter. We are actively listening and reviewing player concerns and priorities with our own internal concerns and priorities. The overall goal is to continue to build on and grow DDO for the foreseeable future. The producers letter simply lays out the bullet points of our roadmap towards that goal in 2020.

+1

Please don't invalidate all the old content. A narrow endgame hurts.
We also need server merges! <3
<3

[SofiaNRage]

We are entering a new decade with grand plans for Dungeons & Dragons Online, and I am writing today to share some of our ideas with you. The past decade-plus has been an amazing adventure, and we thank you for being a part of it.



As we gaze further into the second half of the year, we are thrilled to share news about our next expansion, which will see players travel into the mystical plane of the Feywild! Joining characters on their trip will be our next new player character race: the Shifter, capable of temporarily embracing their bestial aspects to rend enemies and survive. Another thing we can say today about our upcoming Feywild expansion is that you will need to learn new, powerful ways to overcome challenge, and doing so will gain you the experience necessary to push past level 30 for the first time in DDO history.



Sev~

Great, let's turn DDO into WOW, id level 100 next?, we already have mounts, why not flying one as well?
Can we assume we are getting more bank space to store the gear needed to equip a toon through 30+ levels?
How about another 1/2 baked crafting system where we need to farm stuff to take up more space?
I'm already wasting 2 million epic XP every time I want an epic past life, so is it going to be 10 million now?
I know you need to make money to keep the lights on, but we don't need a $100 expansion every couple of years, it defeats 1/2 the purpose of being a VIP
Every update and expansion obsoletes what is already in-game, how an=bout building upon and expanding what already exists?
The fun factor is quickly leaving this game as you rush to increase the power, and there is way to much grind

[Zakharov]

We are increasing the level cap.

I hope you reconsider.

The core issue I think is - how best to provide a way for people to play together?

Having a static level cap gives a reliable "place" for people to congregate. The longer the cap remains static, the more content you can add in the same "place", the easier it is to find people to adventure with.

Pre-Underdark was the most vibrant time I can remember. Groups and raids were plentiful since everyone was in the same "place". Multiple raid LFMs were the norm every day. My guild at the time had enough active players to run concurrent raid groups multiple times per week. After Underdark, the raiding slowed then stopped. The content was great, but the lvl cap increase (and new difficulty levels) divided people into much smaller groups so no one was in the same "place" again. Within a few months most people stopped playing and the guild dissolved.

It took a long time for lvl 30 endgame to approach what lvl 20 endgame was. It may even be better in some ways the past year or so. If you increase the lvl cap, how many years will it take before it gets back to the same "place"?

[Lencrennis]

We are entering a new decade with grand plans for Dungeons & Dragons Online, and I am writing today to share some of our ideas with you. The past decade-plus has been an amazing adventure, and we thank you for being a part of it.

We're kicking off 2020 with a bit of polish and refresh to two of DDO's most historic adventure packs: The Catacombs and Delera's Tomb! Both of these adventures will get Epic versions in our next game update, which also features the previously-announced Alchemist class. The Alchemist mixes and matches spells to create powerful reactions that help allies and incinerate foes. Expect Update 45 to arrive in February!

Season One of the Hardcore League was met with enthusiasm and excitement, so we're making it a recurring event! In Season Two, Mortality will be replaced by DDO's classic foe Arraetrikos, who will empower new Champions with devilish powers. Expect future seasons to test your skill in how you build and play characters, in addition to new rewards! You will read more about these changes as we near future seasons.

2020 will also bring a long-standing community request to the game: a 64-bit client. The 64-bit client can improve the overall performance of the game for many, and we look forward to its release later this year. We also have user interface improvements planned for the Shared Account Bank to make it easier to store, sort, and access the items you've collected. Other quality of life improvements are in the planning stages as well, and we'll talk more about it later this year.

Spring will bring a new adventure pack set in Stormreach, where the Gatekeepers need your help to determine the fate of some missing acolytes in the Cerulean Hills, and investigate the sudden appearance of a strange hut in the Harbor. In the summer, we're considering a new adventure pack in addition to some Legendary versions of well-known raids, but we want to keep that unannounced for now.

As we gaze further into the second half of the year, we are thrilled to share news about our next expansion, which will see players travel into the mystical plane of the Feywild! Joining characters on their trip will be our next new player character race: the Shifter, capable of temporarily embracing their bestial aspects to rend enemies and survive. Another thing we can say today about our upcoming Feywild expansion is that you will need to learn new, powerful ways to overcome challenge, and doing so will gain you the experience necessary to push past level 30 for the first time in DDO history.

We have other surprises in store for 2020 as well, but the above is a high-level road map of our current schedule. As always, the road map can change, and we will endeavor to let you know how things are going as plans become realities. We are very thankful for your support of this game for more than a decade, and we are thrilled to embark on a new decade of adventure with you.

Sev~

So, how much of this can I trust given a previous producer's letter outright stated that level 30 was a permanent level cap?

[Lencrennis]

+1

Please don't invalidate all the old content. A narrow endgame hurts.
We also need server merges! <3
<3

Precisely. It risks their bottom line, if they recall Underdark and Shadowfail. But nobody working on the systems right now- or with their finger on the business decisions- was on the project for both of them. History's repeating itself, and there's not enough left of DDO to survive another level cap raise done wrong. We're at Ravenloft quality or die, lads.

[TheMaxpower]

Things that are OP today, including Inquisitive, will no longer be OP compared to the new Alchemist class and other things likely to be introduced later this year. So why bother with all the planed nerfs? The imminent power creep will nerf things for you. We see this all the time. So, in effect, there will be a double-nerf: one from taking away or adjusting certain abilities that toons currently have, and a second nerf as a result of the power creep, which makes older stuff either obsolete or less powerful relatively speaking. Also, nerfing just makes people upset … some of whom have spent a lot of time and money building a particular toon!

(Although I made some of these points earlier, I thought they were worth re-mentioning in light of the direction of this conversation and the new details being disclosed by SSG in this thread.)

[ponzo]

For the same reasons as many other players, I am against a straight-forward raising of the level cap.

My own way of doing something like this would be:

* Make sure the level 33+ content has a re-balanced difficulty in normal, hard and elite that is much tougher than now.
* Remove reaper as a game type from that same new level 33+ content.
* Make a legendary destinies systems along the lines of the epic one. It could mechanically be much different, but the same kind of theme.
* Make the low-hanging, tier 1, type of fruit in that system bonuses of the same types that past lives offer. Not to the same level of power, but close. This would help newer players who are not past life obsessed to stay competitive.

I realise that people may not like the idea of removing reaper anywhere but I am sure there are many justifications that can be provided.

Existing content would be much the same. Don't change the current TR system, but also do not let it matter beyond level 30.

Just get the balance right going forward for the people who want an end game and let people who like to get every possible benefit continue to use TR/past lives as a tool.

The suggestion above would also narrow the gap between new and established players without entirely invalidating their progress.

I'm fairly sure the above isn't as well thought out as it could be, but I'm not the game designer!

[NabeGewell]

Does the feedback actually matter?


Not the first time this happened where you'll announce some unwanted update or major change just as a form as lubrication and continue with it's release with mild to no changes despite the community response. Severlin's letters like these usually meant:' well, we're already in progress of making these changes, we spent enough wor khours to where there's no turning back with our limited staff, so really, it's just a matter of time'. Overall the communication with the community here seems comparable to a collectable in Search and Rescue: it's so close, yet so far away and you only feel lied to believing your action matters.
It's not like, for example, a Warframe developer team which integrated a game glitch in to a gameplay mechanic, because people seemed to enjoy it and made fun builds around it along with spending time and maybe money around it, instead of stealthnerfing it. Here it's as a 'brace yourselves' to be ready to consume sovereign pots and otto boxes from the game store or run the same hamster wheel endless times while feeding on that endgame delusion when cap was 20, that will never happen again.

In case you do pretend to care: 64bit option and possibly better inventory system does sounds good.

~This is not meant to be vague or uncertain. We are increasing the level cap. We are simply not yet at the stage in development where it is ready for full public details.~

All that talk about being challanged and seems like people who are, are in position to make genius decisions like this.

~The overall goal is to continue to build on and grow DDO...~

Yea dude, real funny. Before racial/reaper update our guild on Thelanis could run 2 full raid groups at the same time with a hand full of people to spare. Now it's borderline dead at most times along with server itself, so great job! No, really, pat yourselves on the back, please.

But who cares, right? As long as the mmo locusts are happy and the hunchbacks are buying expansions for their 6 multibox acounts to farm what suits their digital hoarding needs - all is fine and dandy.

Good luck

[Jerevth]

I’m pretty sure that their communication technique for sharing nerfs is the Door In The Face technique.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-i...face_technique

They’re prettying consistent about how the make changes they think might be unpopular. They announce something truly rage inspiring and then they walk it back to something that is “just” terrible and then they get heaps of praise for the improvement.

Turbine/SSG: “We’re going to stab you in the face and then delete all of your characters.”
player response: “RAR! We dislike that very much!”
other player response: “Look at all these beagles why do you always say there is dooooom? Maybe you’ll like being stabbed in the face”
Turbine/SSG: “we decided that we aren’t going to stab you in the face because we heard your feedback and we value you. We are just going to delete all past lives from all characters. That way you even get to keep your characters!”
player response: “Wow, that’s not nearly as bad as the first pass for this update. I guess we can live with that.”

+1. Nailed it with the conversation aspects.

WRT the the Cap increase...

So long as 31+ meets the following criteria, I think I'd like this idea:
-Benefits don't spill into the heroics and epic lives in a significant way. (Someone brought up the idea that this could be contained to the feywild only- You're a genius.)
-The decision to go past 30 is optional. (Just as the decision to run to level 30 after hitting 20 is optional.)
-Level 31+, in no way, has a trickle down affect on the rest of the game. (As Reaper was announced to not affect the regular game balancing... lessons learned.)

I've seen some forum-birthed ideas pop up in later development, and I am hopeful that I've guessed rightly on where this will go- if so it's going to make me very excited. (I'm too old to get giddy anymore.)

One thing though: I still didn't see the announcement for Houses. (Horses were nice, but I think someone misheard.)

Finally, after last year's champing at the bit, begging for the Producer's Letter, did anyone mention that Sev got this one out much sooner? Thanks for that.

[JoeCamb02140]

That still sounds like a pretty bad thing to me.

30 levels to spread out the DDO population is already too much with the remaining population on each of the servers. More is not better in this case.

Yeah. Frankly it would be great if the DDO team could come up with some form of dynamic leveling system like the one GW2 uses: [https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dyn...vel_adjustment]

I don't think that system is the right one for DDO, but there could be something like that implemented that would allow capped players to play with lower level players without ruining their xp run. I am not sure how this would impact the current bravery bonus system, and it maybe that it messes with it to such a degree to make it implausible. That said, I think it is worth considering options beyond what we have now.

[Jango-EX]

I was happy about telling everyone that I played DDO and there the lvl cap was never ever gonna be raised cuz you guys told us so. It was nice. Still, that would mean that equipment should be about collecting and favor and stuff, and I suppose people don't care about stuff that don't give more power in order to run them and keeping the lvl cap as it is is getting harder and harder since you got a power creep condensed in a single lvl all over the items. Yeah, I get that, and I get that you wouldn't do that 180 degrees shift from the previous position with all of the backlash involved if it wasn't really needed.

Just please do not make me push past lvl 30 in order to iconic reincarnate. I'd rather live without that joy.

[Captain_Wizbang]

Mortality will be replaced by DDO's classic foe Arraetrikos,



Spring will bring a new adventure pack set in Stormreach, where the Gatekeepers need your help to determine the fate of some missing acolytes in the Cerulean Hills,

new player character race: the Shifter, capable of temporarily embracing their bestial aspects to rend enemies and survive.

Sev~

Harry on HCL for the win. I like this idea.

Cerulean Hills is an area that begs for more content, this is good news.

Shifters in DDO is a perfect fit. The synergies w/ Druid & Ranger in PnP work well, and I have no doubt our version will be awesome.



I really hope you can do some rework on the reaper enhancement system (like combining all 3 trees into 1) and lowering the power creep associated with it.

Give short & long bow users some serious attention please.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE rework and add some ranger spells.

SSG, I speak out way too negatively here as of late because of my disagreement with some choices you all have made. A lot of the "FUN" aspect was taken away from me (and others) because of those implementations made. It was not or ever will be my intention to be a negative voice here, but when players are passionate about this game, and feel slighted by changes made I speak out.


Here's my personal request, you give bow users some love, put Rangers on your short list for this year, and I'll come back 100%. (who am I to make this request? A paying customer from Dec 2006)

[Chacka_DDO]

Foremost the prospect of a 64-bit client is encouraging for me and I hope it leads in some improvements foremost for the memory management of the DDO client.
I have only 32GB RAM but currently, the DDO client should use only 4GB of it.

I'm a bit unsure what to think of the idea that the level cap will be raised past lvl 30.
With that level, cap increase all legendary raids who are currently "end game" will lose that position and you need once again new content to give something to do at cap.
I have the feeling you try to introduce more of the same maybe because you have to sell more things in the DDO shop for bypassing the "grind".
Anyway, I hope you have a lucky hand and success in doing so and the levels past 30 will be interesting and the new legendary content too.
More races and classes are of course always welcome
And I look forward to more quality of life improvements, I hope foremost you can give us more space and I still hope that you make all items bound to account besides there are very good reasons not to do it.
I see no problem to make also every raid item BTA foremost if you buy them for the newer runes.
One idea for more space would be that you include much more space for the account bank in the DDO subscription, other modern games even give unlimited space for subscribers I dont see why the space in DDO is that limited and expensive even for subscribers (VIP)

In any case, I'm quite happy with the last Updates and I look forward to U45 and wish you the best luck and success in the new decade!

[Reilia]

Will the new level cap change the"double reaper xp" for lvl30+ quests? I could see where that might be necessary but it penalizes the players still trying to catch up on all the lives left from racial yes and running to 30 to grad a nice chunk of reaper xp. Maybe they could keep it double if the players are all 30 or lower.

[DRoark]

Does the feedback actually matter?

No, it doesn't. Most of the general feedback already said "NO" to a level cap increase, for several valid reasons.
They're going to do it anyways, fracture the playerbase level spread more, and we're going to leave in droves.

I think they're really trying to see how far they can push it before the game completely tanks. Every cap increase,
there's less people to play with, every TR Hamster Wheel of Doom just adds to a shrinking community. Sad, really.

[BrotherDog]

Shifters? I'm less-than-enthusiastic about shifters. If we're going to the feywild it would have been more suitable to add eladrin, but I guess we don't need more elves.

Eladrin are outsiders not a player race. What will you want next, Archons, Guardinals and Devas? You can already summon them in game if you are the correct spell caster.
Shifters are a core race of Eberron that have a lycnthropes in their family tree as it were.
Hopefully we can eventually get Goblinoids and Kobolds playable, but the missing Changelings could at least imitate those. The other "missing" species
would be Kalasgtar, but those are just humans anyway so you can just a human toon a Kalashtar then, wish for that fulfilled.

[DRoark]

Yeah. Frankly it would be great if the DDO team could come up with some form of dynamic leveling system like the one GW2 uses: [https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dyn...vel_adjustment]

I don't think that system is the right one for DDO, but there could be something like that implemented that would allow capped players to play with lower level players without ruining their xp run. I am not sure how this would impact the current bravery bonus system, and it maybe that it messes with it to such a degree to make it implausible. That said, I think it is worth considering options beyond what we have now.

The TR system was originally a good plan, but then came along ER's, racials, Iconics, and now they're going to 30+? If they add Legendary TR's to this,
and crank out yet-another-wheel we're pretty much done. They're taking a game that WAS fun in the beginning, and just making it a neverending chore
to try and stay relevent to the power-crowd they're catering to. Not the average player. They didn't even let Heroic completionist retrofit to be a passive,
like the "new" completionists. I'm pretty sure they have a gorilla designing the game now.

They need to move character progression laterally, not boost the level cap and hose up the entire game dynamic anymore than it already is.