Epic Destiny Changes- Communication is Key

[karatemack]

After rumors and speculation about massive changes which would upend the current Epic Destiny system, both Cordovan and Cocomajobo have confirmed that some type of change is incoming for Epic Destinies. While I'm sure the development team have plenty of reasons for not discussing publicly at this time, not the least of which most likely being because they haven't finalized any plans at this time as they have indicated, it would be nice if there were communication on the plans for these changes FAR IN ADVANCE of their development and implementation.

While I won't re-state any specific rumors or potential leaks here, much of what was stated would lead to massive imbalances in the game. It would make the grind for Epic lives exponentially worse, and would leave most players with an extreme increase in power all at once. Whether it is increasing the level cap, or implementing changes to a system like Epic Destinies which provide a large portion of character power, having players involved in the discussions earlier in the process would be beneficial to everyone. Much like when enhancements were updated many years ago from the prestige (hope I picked all the right pre-reqs) system to the familiar window we utilize for enhancement/reaper trees today.

[Bjond]

the grind for Epic lives

I actually really like the current epics. It's not a grind for me, it's fun -- at least after they're all unlocked. I'm even OK with the unlock grind on a new character. It sorta reminds one to be gentle with epic newbies.

Swapping EDs to a back-loaded system would be an instant game-punt for me. The leaked speculation already completely killed any chance of me pre-ordering an expansion. They'd have to put up a Lamannia preview that assuages my fears of back-loading for that to happen.

OTH, while doom-saying is popular, what if they learned and decided to flip things to a much more front-loaded system? That would mean alts would be more fun and epic newbies wouldn't be so fragile and useless. I'd LOVE that and would express my appreciation there with a pre-order.

[Stravix]

I actually really like the current epics. It's not a grind for me, it's fun -- at least after they're all unlocked. I'm even OK with the unlock grind on a new character. It sorta reminds one to be gentle with epic newbies.

Swapping EDs to a back-loaded system would be an instant game-punt for me. The leaked speculation already completely killed any chance of me pre-ordering an expansion. They'd have to put up a Lamannia preview that assuages my fears of back-loading for that to happen.

OTH, while doom-saying is popular, what if they learned and decided to flip things to a much more front-loaded system? That would mean alts would be more fun and epic newbies wouldn't be so fragile and useless. I'd LOVE that and would express my appreciation there with a pre-order.

EDs are already WAY too frontloaded right now. Your character doesn't get stronger from 21-30, just your gear does. But, that is irrelevant right now, as the "leaked" version of the ED pass was already confirmed to be wildly off the bar from where they were actually planning on going, and that they would be sharing it with us the moment they feel it is coherent enough to be tested.

[Tyrande]

IMHO, I think this is to prevent level 30 people going into R10 dungeons power leveling level 20 (especially fighters/paladins/martial type) people in the party.

Nothing says that people can't do that in the future, but without full EDs at level 20, even the martial people will be difficult to survive in R10 in level 33 legendary dungeons.

Also, since there are going to be a revamp, I suspect there will be more epic skills and epic spells in the new trees to support up to level 40. Well, if players fill out the trees at level 20, where is the fun in that? Doing legendary level 43 dungeons in R10 at level 20?

P.S. I thought in DDO we say "Information is Key" as in House Phiarlan ;o)

[karatemack]

p.s. I thought in ddo we say "information is key" as in house phiarlan ;o)

[Gniewomir]

I'm pretty sure they said something about deleting xp spheres if you consider it a leak. :P

Personally i hope they're going to get rid leveling eds and either make them f2p or delete requirements for ER other than lvl 30. right now there's literally 0 reason for new players without ed to run epics. And if we speak about leveling - cmon, you pay for the thing that gives you nothing cause you have to level it up first, so basically they're selling ability to grind xp for specific purpose. And i don't think that alts are so popular nowadays that adding some annoyance is required to make them less popular. Seriously, i hate leveling eds when i roll new character, especially those like healbots or tanks, so soloing ability is pretty low.

[HungarianRhapsody]

I've heard some really wild rumors about the upcoming Epic Destiny changes, so having some hints as to what's actually coming next year would be very welcome.

[Bjond]

IMHO, I think this is to prevent level 30 people going into R10 dungeons power leveling level 20

The level-gap penalty on earned R/XP already does that: "4 levels below the highest-level character in the party, you receive a -50% penalty." and it gets worse the bigger the gap.

if players fill out the trees at level 20, where is the fun in that?

It's in using the passives & abilities. The only fun in an unfilled tree is hoping to use the abilities. If hope is all you need, why log in, just dream on ...

I'm pretty sure they said something about deleting xp spheres if you consider it a leak.

Removing karma would be interesting. That would mean you could play whatever tree you like and then ETR your pick of sphere. Doing that would kill sales for their "Call of Destiny" items. I admit to using those for my caster, but then I'm also punting all caster play in part because it requires using one.

Hard to say if they'd remove initial XP. There's a strong abhorrence for unlocks without grind here (but but, how can you get something if you haven't worked/earned it?). Heh. This is play, not work.

That initial grind is a good thing in some ways. It forces a player to experience each tree and learn how it works with the build, but there definitely comes a point when that's just beating a dead horse.

[boredGamer]

Nothing says that people can't do that in the future, but without full EDs at level 20, even the martial people will be difficult to survive in R10 in level 33 legendary dungeons.

Who cares if they survive? If the plan is pike xp, you can do it just as well dead.

[Stravix]

The level-gap penalty on earned R/XP already does that: "4 levels below the highest-level character in the party, you receive a -50% penalty." and it gets worse the bigger the gap.



It's in using the passives & abilities. The only fun in an unfilled tree is hoping to use the abilities. If hope is all you need, why log in, just dream on ...



Removing karma would be interesting. That would mean you could play whatever tree you like and then ETR your pick of sphere. Doing that would kill sales for their "Call of Destiny" items. I admit to using those for my caster, but then I'm also punting all caster play in part because it requires using one.

Hard to say if they'd remove initial XP. There's a strong abhorrence for unlocks without grind here (but but, how can you get something if you haven't worked/earned it?). Heh. This is play, not work.

That initial grind is a good thing in some ways. It forces a player to experience each tree and learn how it works with the build, but there definitely comes a point when that's just beating a dead horse.

I would argue watching your character get stronger would be the fun. People like to see themselves progress. That's why people still level up characters w/o otto boxes, because they want that progression. Frontload the power too much, and you get no progression.

[ggmarquez]

The level-gap penalty on earned R/XP already does that: "4 levels below the highest-level character in the party, you receive a -50% penalty." and it gets worse the bigger the gap.

this doesn't apply in epic levels. only heroic.

[droid327]

It'd be nice but its not going to happen. Not how the devs operate. They dont share ideas with us at the idea phase and let us iterate it with them on the whiteboard. No, they just put together whatever they think is a good idea, then go straight to coding it, and THEN put it on Lama for us all to playtest it, then have to go back and fix all the problems on the fly that we could've easily told them about before they wasted their time coding a problematic system in the first place.

Or worse, they just push a flawed system through anyway with just a few insignificant tweaks, just because they'd already spent so much time and effort building it.

For some reason, even after playing the game for 10+ years, the devs dont seem to think we understand it enough to be able to theorycraft with them. Their mantra is always "we want you to actually play it and see", as though we dont predict what 90% of the problems end up being just from reading the patch notes.

[SpartanKiller13]

Who cares if they survive? If the plan is pike xp, you can do it just as well dead.

If you watch multiboxers, it seems to be even more efficient to quest while logged out, so your XP pot duration doesn't decrease lol. If every quest only takes 1 minute of your Sov II pot, you can get ~360 quests done with just one of them

------

I'm sure there are people dragging others through quests in epics to grind PL's etc, but I haven't seen it done long-term deliberately aside from multiboxers bringing their own alts, and occasional PUG's sort of qualify (like if I'm zerging WPM for SXP I'll open the LFM 20-30).

[Lynnabel]

It'd be nice but its not going to happen. Not how the devs operate. They dont share ideas with us at the idea phase and let us iterate it with them on the whiteboard. No, they just put together whatever they think is a good idea, then go straight to coding it, and THEN put it on Lama for us all to playtest it, then have to go back and fix all the problems on the fly that we could've easily told them about before they wasted their time coding a problematic system in the first place.

Or worse, they just push a flawed system through anyway with just a few insignificant tweaks, just because they'd already spent so much time and effort building it.

For some reason, even after playing the game for 10+ years, the devs dont seem to think we understand it enough to be able to theorycraft with them. Their mantra is always "we want you to actually play it and see", as though we dont predict what 90% of the problems end up being just from reading the patch notes.

I don't really see how this is a fair assessment, especially given that you heard about our planned ED changes from the announcement in which we stated we wanted to take time and iterate and do it right - the exact opposite of what this post implies :P

[droid327]

I don't really see how this is a fair assessment, especially given that you heard about our planned ED changes from the announcement in which we stated we wanted to take time and iterate and do it right - the exact opposite of what this post implies.

And that's great, but its still just us watching through a window. My criticism wasnt that you dont tell us what's coming - you do, between the annual Producer Letter and communication in the forums, we generally have a good idea what's coming down the line. My criticism was that you dont share specifics of the plans at a more nascent stage, when its still in that whiteboard theorycraft flowchart stage. I'm sure you want to avoid analysis paralysis and too many cooks in the kitchen...but every time we see a big update hit Lama it always feels like we could've saved a lot of time and effort if we could've pointed things out much sooner, high-level conceptual shortcomings in the design rather than just playtesting bugs and trying to root out unforeseen abuses.

Like the IPS changes, for example. I feel like if there was a discussion where you were like "OK we feel like IPS is problematic for balancing ranged vs. melee, here's what we're planning to do to rectify that", of course there'd be a lot of crying and moaning about it, but I think we still could've worked towards a solution that was both ultimately better received by the playerbase, and also better tailored to accomplish the intent. Instead, we just got -20% dropped in our laps and it was far too late to steer the ship away from that iceberg.

Or with the level cap increase...I've been wandering the desert since then prophesying of the dangers of attribute statflation with Expertise feats and Throwers, since those combine multiplicatively with base damage on a single stat to make DPS scale exponentially rather than linearly like other weapons. Those kind of high-level considerations sometimes end up unaddressed at the design stage and trickle down to problems in Live that sometimes take years to correct, though they could be predicted and addressed early on if we had more open discussion throughout the process.

[ggmarquez]

it was far too late to steer the ship away from that iceberg.

how many different heads does the forum-hydra have? if you make it the captain of the ship, it never even hauls anchor since it can't decide on which direction it wants to go. as much as i would love to have a say in the governance of a game that i love, i know deep down it's better to leave the steering-wheel in the hands of the captain, and not in a hundred hands of the crew, no matter how courageous and that one might be mine.

[Stravix]

And that's great, but its still just us watching through a window. My criticism wasnt that you dont tell us what's coming - you do, between the annual Producer Letter and communication in the forums, we generally have a good idea what's coming down the line. My criticism was that you dont share specifics of the plans at a more nascent stage, when its still in that whiteboard theorycraft flowchart stage. I'm sure you want to avoid analysis paralysis and too many cooks in the kitchen...but every time we see a big update hit Lama it always feels like we could've saved a lot of time and effort if we could've pointed things out much sooner, high-level conceptual shortcomings in the design rather than just playtesting bugs and trying to root out unforeseen abuses.

Like the IPS changes, for example. I feel like if there was a discussion where you were like "OK we feel like IPS is problematic for balancing ranged vs. melee, here's what we're planning to do to rectify that", of course there'd be a lot of crying and moaning about it, but I think we still could've worked towards a solution that was both ultimately better received by the playerbase, and also better tailored to accomplish the intent. Instead, we just got -20% dropped in our laps and it was far too late to steer the ship away from that iceberg.

Or with the level cap increase...I've been wandering the desert since then prophesying of the dangers of attribute statflation with Expertise feats and Throwers, since those combine multiplicatively with base damage on a single stat to make DPS scale exponentially rather than linearly like other weapons. Those kind of high-level considerations sometimes end up unaddressed at the design stage and trickle down to problems in Live that sometimes take years to correct, though they could be predicted and addressed early on if we had more open discussion throughout the process.

Yeah, no. While I may trust the forum population to be able to make slight adjustements, having them design the skeleton of a system will lead to it either being drawn every which way, or just go nowhere from the start.

The IPS chance needed to happen for the sake of future balancing potential, but the forums would never let it go through if they had the say, because (as a whole) they never want things to go down.

[Eantarus]

I don't really see how this is a fair assessment, especially given that you heard about our planned ED changes from the announcement in which we stated we wanted to take time and iterate and do it right - the exact opposite of what this post implies :P

How about telling us what's actually being planned/considered so we can respond, instead of leaving us to endless wild speculation?

[Lynnabel]

How about telling us what's actually being planned/considered so we can respond, instead of leaving us to endless wild speculation?

We will, when we're ready.

[Arkat]

We will, when we're ready.

Might be too late, by then.

Yes, I get that the Devs are talking to the PC but that group, honestly, is too small a subsection of the player-base.

I'm skeptical of both the amount and quality of the feedback you get there.