Would you reocmmend DDO to a friend?

[mikarddo]

YEAH!
- Character customization is amazing. So many options, and they actually matter and feel different!
- So many lovely handmade quests!
- Great combat where you don't just stand in place and use "rotations" but movement is always involved!
- You don't need a full group or the holy trinity, so less waiting around for that perfect group is materialize!
- The ability to change difficulty for both quests and raids makes for a very flexible game!

NAY!
- Lag...! I do not recall ever playing any other game where lag was so abundant and annoying!
- Low server population!
- Catching up takes years!
- Being spread out in levels makes grouping harder!
- Being VIP and buying the latest expansion is not enough to join all groups!

Overall personal verdict.
Hell no, I would not recommend DDO to a friend right now, sadly, even though it is a great game. I would feel I let them into a trap as things are right now.

Needed improvements
It would take something along these lines for me start recommending DDO:
- Lag under control (maybe I might as well wish for peace in the Middle East, understanding my wife or Corona to only be a beer)
- Cross server grouping or megaserver.
- Faster start on past lives. If you have fewer than 10 racial PL and perform either a heroic TR or an icon TR you also get a racial PL. Similarly, if you have fewer than 10 heroic PL and perform a racial TR you also get a heroic PL.
- Buying the latest expansion gives you all prior expansions (but none of the extras).

Would you recommend DDO to a friend at this time?

[AlmGhandi]

All my friends that would play have already had experience and made up their own minds…
If I thought someone would like it, I would recommend it.

[ShifterThePirate]

Probably not... managing quests (find them, maintaining chains) is too hard for new players.
Not many grouping options for new players because most people play Elite or Reaper.
Lag and bugs...
Most people stop enjoying it when they find out their first character is not build optimal and it's too complicated to change it or they don't want to start all over on a new character.

[Melkazar]

I already have. Brought three new people in from my current training class. (No, playing the game is not tied to passing the training.) Two are in Stormreach and one is in Korthos. Once they are out the next step is to get them into the guild. As to the setup of the game being hard, the recruiter should always be willing to answer questions.

[LurkingVeteran]

YEAH!
- Character customization is amazing. So many options, and they actually matter and feel different!
- So many lovely handmade quests!
- Great combat where you don't just stand in place and use "rotations" but movement is always involved!
- You don't need a full group or the holy trinity, so less waiting around for that perfect group is materialize!
- The ability to change difficulty for both quests and raids makes for a very flexible game!

NAY!
- Lag...! I do not recall ever playing any other game where lag was so abundant and annoying!
- Low server population!
- Catching up takes years!
- Being spread out in levels makes grouping harder!
- Being VIP and buying the latest expansion is not enough to join all groups!

Overall personal verdict.
Hell no, I would not recommend DDO to a friend right now, sadly, even though it is a great game. I would feel I let them into a trap as things are right now.

Needed improvements
It would take something along these lines for me start recommending DDO:
- Lag under control (maybe I might as well wish for peace in the Middle East, understanding my wife or Corona to only be a beer)
- Cross server grouping or megaserver.
- Faster start on past lives. If you have fewer than 10 racial PL and perform either a heroic TR or an icon TR you also get a racial PL. Similarly, if you have fewer than 10 heroic PL and perform a racial TR you also get a heroic PL.
- Buying the latest expansion gives you all prior expansions (but none of the extras).

Would you recommend DDO to a friend at this time?

Good summary. Just some finer points:

If lag is kept under control, DDO is actually an amazing coop-RPG for a private group of friends with some D&D experience, either new player or returning ones with not much power creep. This could deserve more marketing.

It's also at least OK as a single-player action RPG with lots of customization.

The problems start in playing it as an MMO by yourself, finding and contributing to PUGs. Unfortunately, DDO was made to be, and is recognized as foremost an MMO, so many of new/returning players treating it as such likely end up disillusioned.
1) It's difficult to quickly find a group compared to other MMO's,
2) The level of powercreep already at low levels in DDO is just enormous by any standards, with the reaper trees being perhaps the silliest addition. I remember back when the worst you would encounter was twinks with +3d6 holy of holy burst weapons and enough UMD for some wand healing.

Part of the problem is the community. There has been some self-selection where mostly the grinders have stuck around. But grinding does not appeal to most people. There is a reason Korean MMO's never took off in the west. If the whole mindset of the community is that grinding for power is everything, and you need years to catch up, few late-joiners will even bother trying. You can be competitive at cap without past-lives just by grinding some items (and reaper points...), but the PUG-experience to get there may be frustrating.

The ideal answer to power creep isn't to reduce the grind from 2 to 1 years, it's to even the playing field by making first-lifers able to easily PUG with characters of similar power. That was the reason for level-restricted grouping in MMOs to begin with, but all the power creep has completely messed up that mechanic. Ideally they would do cross-server grouping and calculate some effective level based on power creep to put groups together.

However, DDO is an old game, so we shouldn't kid ourself that there will be a huge surge of players. It might slow the decline though.

[Fenrisulven7]

I brought 4 new players in last year. They're having a blast.

Although I told them to stay away from the forums - too much negativity.

[Sebastrd]

Every time I've pitched DDO to friends, I've felt like I spent more time making excuses for the bugs and drawbacks than I have extolling the virtues.

[Justicesfury]

DDO is not new player friendly and has been chasing away its exsisting ones. The 3-4 Thousand people left that play it, have toons with a lot of lives, It is impossible to catch up. Its also VERY expensive. While DDO markets itself as free, we all know its not. Most of the game is locked. The expansions are 30-50 bucks each just for the base price on them. than you need to get points to unlock more stuck or pay a monthly fee. The game has no Tech support and has many mechanical issues with stuff like lag, load screen problems, etc...Of course many other issues as well.

So that would be a no.

[C-Dog]

100%.

New players have to accept that this is not a game based on the latest tech, and that it's NOT D&D 3.5 or 5th ed or any other tabletop version, so there's a learning curve with the new "rules", but given that it's a great game.

[vegabond1969]

The 3-4 Thousand people left that play it, have toons with a lot of lives, It is impossible to catch up. Its also VERY expensive. While DDO markets itself as free, we all know its not.

Yet everyday I see dozens or more first life characters running around, and even I've only recently TR'd my oldest character with still a dozen others to go. Yes most of the higher end things require money, if a new player runs the game right, they can purchase most of the content packs with the ddo points they acquire from just running quest they can do and gaining favor. As far as impossible to catch up, they don't need to unless they feel they have to be a part of that group that cares more about how many past lives they have then how fun the game actual is.

[shmagmhar]

some of the people I play table top D&D with seemed curious .

" Oh DDO ? thats free to play right?"
" free to play , pay to enjoy "

I told them i like the game alot but its not for everyone

[ShifterThePirate]

DDO is not new player friendly and has been chasing away its exsisting ones. The 3-4 Thousand people left that play it, have toons with a lot of lives, It is impossible to catch up. Its also VERY expensive. While DDO markets itself as free, we all know its not. Most of the game is locked. The expansions are 30-50 bucks each just for the base price on them. than you need to get points to unlock more stuck or pay a monthly fee. The game has no Tech support and has many mechanical issues with stuff like lag, load screen problems, etc...Of course many other issues as well.

So that would be a no.

A lot of players barely have time to level one character to 30... I play this game for many years and I have 0 characters with TR levels. Because it's just not worth it for me (grind or $$). It's a lot more fun to just make a new character to play a different class and keep the other one high level to join friends who do higher level quests. Catching up on TR levels is not really needed for a casual player with all the new powerful loot that keeps coming every expansion.

[Pnumbra]

NAY!
- Lag...! I do not recall ever playing any other game where lag was so abundant and annoying!
- Low server population!
- Catching up takes years!
- Being spread out in levels makes grouping harder!
- Being VIP and buying the latest expansion is not enough to join all groups!

I play because it's the only game that is closest to DnD. But, my daughter bought me a Playstation 4 to join her in Eder Scrolls. I have to admit ES is fun. hmmmmm.

[Inanout]

I would recommend Exmina before DDO
Get in at the beginning of a potentially great game.
The melee combat is the best.

I have tried to get people to play but so many just do not like it after trying.

So I no longer recommend.

[KoobTheProud]

I have tried to get my nephews and cousins who are all gamers of one stripe or another to play and been rebuffed when they research the game and find out about the grind.

I'm currently developing 3 premium accounts as inducements for them to play, buying sale content as it pops up so that the accounts have significant content and low-level well-equipped tanks, healers, rogues and bards for them to start their journey if they decide to make the plunge.

DDO is the closest of the MFRPG's and MMO's to the shooters that dominate the millennial play space in terms of mechanics and play style. This should make it a no-brainer for younger players who like Swords and Sorcery and shooting things up.

The problem is it has no real PvP and the game experience can feel somewhat debilitating if a player plays in the wrong interval, when lag has reared it's ugly head again. One of my cousins played briefly as a healer (not my inducement, this was back in 2011 or so) and gave it up because he said it was impossible to do the job well between the lag and the pace of play. He said MMO players understand about keeping the healer in LoS even if they don't always do it. He called DDO players crankheads always running ahead and around corners and then *****ing when the now impossible heals they needed never arrived. Even when everybody played right lag could be a spoiler.

If I was running DDO I'd market it as an FRPG with great multi-player options not as an MMO. I'd use viral marketing, both of groups and solo players, as the main focus of that effort.

DDO lends itself to a voice-over-video format due to the heavy FRPG elements and the varied pace of play. I'd put together a compilation of blitzing characters taking down the enemy in various ways and I'd leave the spectacular deaths that occurred in the mix. I'd definitely have a repeater blitz in that mix for the shooter fans who like FRPG's and MMO's.

I'd script all of this and make it a really professional effort. Not CGI like the opening in Stormreach but actual players in play with professional voice actors doing the commentary. Put a good player playing in a disciplined fashion (to match the script) alongside a professional voice actor with a good script that matches and these viral videos would definitely draw in some new blood. They would be short 5 minute affairs that avoided showing actual players images, avatars only, and were designed to be dramatic narratives not explanations. They'd tell a tale of a Human Barbarian, Halfling Rogue Mechanic with Repeater, Aasimar FvS (think Angel will all the special effects that combo can produce) and Warforged Wizard in a specific moment that well defines the FRPG genre. They'd include recognizable avatars with a minimum of bling and other things that disturb the story. No reaper wings, however a flash of Aasimar wings at the right time could be very effective in telling that particular story.

I'd find a way to get that big server merge done so everybody was under one tent and the chances of finding a good stable group increased. Nothing sells an MMO or multi-player FRPG like the players around you. The best experiences I have had in gaming, really memorable ones even 20 years later, come attached to the names of the avatars I grouped with over long periods of time. Wormio and Lighthammer (WoW), Kestrel and Bits (EQ), these are people I have not grouped with for more than a decade and I still remember the interactions and the fun I had with them. I played EQ for years past the point it was mechanically fun because the guild and group I had were too good to give up.

I'd create game incentives to get established players to draw in new ones and I'd make most of the benefit of the incentive go to the new player not the recruiter. Why? because the new player is the one you need to keep. The recruiter has enough incentive just by getting people they know to play the game with them. That's enough of a reward for most of us and it vastly exceeds whatever minor incentive we might otherwise get. We just want the people we take the time to recruit to stick around so it was not a wasted effort on our part.

My incentive for new players is the accounts I am building up to let them play when I find the right target. It would be really nice if SSG would throw in on that and make it more likely they were going to stick around.

[Nickodeamous]

Ive tried many times to tell my friends how awesome this game is, but for some reason, the cant get over the graphics. I think they are fine, hut i gre up on an 8 bit Nintendo. Game play is so much fun.

[Kinerd]

yes, but strictly as f2p

I brought 4 new players in last year. They're having a blast.

Although I told them to stay away from the forums - too much negativity.

lol

[krimsonrane]

Sadly no. If you had asked me 5 years ago I may have said yes. Since then the money grabs where temporarily unbinding a single item is $30, the nerf bats where you have to pay to fix what they just broke, the lack of creativity (been playing a D&D RPG where my character uses a big red monkey wrench as a THF weapon. An assassin uses 2 baseball bats, and raids have 4 people and last 2-3 minutes.) The division of it's playing/paying population by levels, past life power, servers, and now HCL. and the crazy idea that in game characters should have development plans that take 5-10 years in real life while you ride a tr train playing everything BUT the character and build you want to play. it's way too much to ask someone else to do.

[AbyssalMage]

No. The game is going in the wrong direction. U45 has already seen an exodus of premium players. HC2 has the VIP.

I would tell my friends to avoid DDO like they are avoiding Corona beer :/

[GramercyRiff]

The game has to have incredible game play to more than make up for the game breaking lag and awful inventory. It just doesn't have that. So no, I'd never recommend this game to anyone in its current state.