So the expansion sucked, what's next?

[Mindos]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_of_Desolation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Isle_of_Dread

One expansion pack, one update pack? We're running out of top classics, aren't we?

[shmagmhar]

we want plancescape and darksun . I also like your idea of expanding ravenloft

[janave]

I would have preferred the explorer zone to be somewhat larger, maybe a quarter or a third larger. However, I would also have preferred several quick travel locations for those times when I'm PUGging and just need to join the quest right-quick. I've suggested the shrine in the snow area and the shrine in the pixie village and the Portal to the Hut-in-the-Harbor as optimal locations for quick-travel destinations. I would also have been happier with either a handful more quests (say 3 to 4) or if the quests we had, especially the super short ones had just a list of optionals to pad the story out further. As an example there could have been an optional to find something to feed the huntsman's horse in Witch Hunt, and there's a smallish Pixie village in one nook that we could have helped defend or something too. I would also have liked to explore where the portals that we close down went.

Personally, I rank the Expansions as Ravenloft > MotU ~= Sharn > Feywild > Shadowfell. Shadowfell's best features were WGU, Mirror, and Storm Horn's wilderness zone for sheer size and exploratory beauty.

I like Sharn most so far for the quest design, Ravenloft felt like it had stronger source material, good implementation, strong theme. Still trying to get the feel for Feywild, the quests are different, which is good for the first few times, not sure how it will hold up for the mass replays, the coming Raid instance has to be pretty incredible for me to say it was value for the money. I had to recall from a few quests because i spent a lot of time and it felt like some scripts didnt go in the intended flow, and so maybe made the quest stuck. So far i didnt see loot combinations that work well on my charisma casters, so also points for Sharn + Loft.

Yep, the Pixie village could have got some more use out of it, a nice highlight of the area

[Tist]

we want plancescape and darksun

No, WE don't.

[Artos_Fabril]

we want plancescape and darksun . I also like your idea of expanding ravenloft

Sigil would make a great setting for DDO2, if that were ever to be a thing, but I don't think Sigil or Athas would make a good expansion for DDO, not because they aren't cool settings, but because the stories they tell don't track to what DDO is at this point. (And Athas is supposed to be unreachable by both planar travel and Spelljammer, so how would we even get there?) Besides, the SP that a single Sorc spends in the average Elite quest would wipe out every remaining living thing on Athas.

[shmagmhar]

Okay how about instead of Dark sun we expand the demon sands for legendary ADQ

[kenawyn]

Sigil would make a great setting for DDO2, if that were ever to be a thing, but I don't think Sigil or Athas would make a good expansion for DDO, not because they aren't cool settings, but because the stories they tell don't track to what DDO is at this point. (And Athas is supposed to be unreachable by both planar travel and Spelljammer, so how would we even get there?) Besides, the SP that a single Sorc spends in the average Elite quest would wipe out every remaining living thing on Athas.

While DDO2 would be nice, I still think there are ways to implement Dark Sun.

How to get there?
I would argue that D&D cosmology changed so much between editions that the old Spelljammer rules might no longer apply.
Even so, I would not want to add spelljamming just to get to Athas.
If Spelljammer is on the table, then give us space based adventures, space travel and space combat - Allodds Online is a mediocre game, but their ship to ship astral combat is pretty nice.

It's true that most mortal magic cannot reach Athas, but there can be some exceptions and special circumstances.

Lets say one of the sorcerer kings will be the main villain, who by searching for more power developed a way to connect Athas to other worlds and began siphoning life force and magic away from Eberron. Naturally this got the attention of the Gatekeepers, who ask us adventurers to find out what is happening and stop the drain.

There is your story hook to Athas.

How to resolve setting differences?
I agree with you that we would be doing a disservice to Dark Sun by simply adding Athas to the current DDO game without making any tweaks or changes.

Special Rules for Dark Sun

Magic
Magic in most words is powered by either the gods, or some mystical energy fields like the weave. On Athas there is no magical field and casters must draw energy from life itself. So most spellcasters who come from different worlds are screwed at first...

- lets make a special rule: you do not need to draw lifeforce when casting - you can cast spells using your existing SP normally, but you must draw lifefore in order to recover your SP pool!
- arcane spellcasters can only recover SP if they have the Preserving or Defiling story feats
- divine spellcasters get their SP from their patrons
- non elemental worshiping clerics, paladins and favored souls are affected by intercession until they can establish a link with their patrons (elemental worshippers are not affected)
- druids and rangers suffer caster level loss until they can make a connection with a grove or other natural site
- magical items powered by non-athasian magics are inoperable or power drained (artifacts and sentient items work normally)

Notes:
- inoperable: count as being subject to Mordenkainen's Disjunction while on Athas
- power drain (option 1): while on Athas all your magical items suffer a debuff reducing their bonuses significantly - for example: an item that gives +12 stat will now give +3
- power drained (option 2): while on Athas you can only equip 2 non-athasian magic item, equipping more and the items become inoperable. Some athasian items might act as a magical power bank increasing the limit

Why do we need all these special rules?
- player power must be reduced in order to make the world seem more dangerous, not doing so would make a mockery of the setting, especially since a lot of people on Athas use stone age level tech (bone weapons, obsidian weapons..)
- due to magic system differences casters will have to work a little to get their power back
- martial oriented classes will have to acquire new gear to regain their edge

To support these changes we need to use strong narrative devices.
Our first quest should be a huge shocker:
- magic and items do not work as usual
- the mobs are extremely dangerous (they are all psionic and everything has high stats)
- objectives will slowly change to escape and survive
- every encounter should be lethal but also have at least 2 or 3 ways to survive it. The goal is not to kill the players in the first quest, but to educate them of the dangers of the Dark Sun world
- later quests will expect the players to understand the mechanics - having learned most of them from the first quest and the hand holding (survive objectives) will stop
- these quests should be designed in a way that makes avoiding danger and combat preferable than killing everything, but the best loot should be hidden behind optional monsters that are capable of wiping the party. This accomplishes 2 things: stealth is viable and you only get the best loot if you are risking party wipes

Progression Systems
Item progression
- since most of our items do not work, this is a golden opportunity to go crazy and design innovative item sets tailored to Dark Sun
- each item should have one or two property that works only on Dark Sun
- to avoid making the items useless outside Dark Sun content, give them unique active or passive abilities that work on Eberron and cannot be obtained any other way
- I don't like power creep and this is my attempt to increase variety and item build diversity without inflating the numbers

Magic Progression
Since most spellcasters were shafted, we need a system that gets their power back.
- Arcane casters should be able to get the Preserving feat through story means. To make it more gamey we could add various tiers of the feat that determines effectiveness. Ultimately at max tier this should remove all problems for spellcasters operating in Dark Sun and also give an active ability that replenishes a small amount of SP when used.
- Why only Preserving and not Defiling? Defiling alters the mind of the user which turns them evil at first and insane later. The game does not support evil alignments, so no Defiling.
- Clerics, Paladins and Favored souls should get the Divine Link feat. Similarly to the arcane feats we can have tiers for this as well, where low tier link gives access to spell casting with reduced caster levels and ultimately players will be immune to intercession even on Eberron.
- Druids, Rangers should get the Natural Link feat. Similarly to the others this should have tiered effects and it will remove caster level reduction.

These magic progression feats could be unlocked by the following:
- We get the first one at the end of the first quest. Remember the tier 1 version should barely be enough to keep the casters at life support
- collecting manuscripts from quests or wilderness area encounters (arcane casters)
- visiting hidden altars inside inside quests or wilderness areas (clerics, paladins..)
- visiting rare nature areas inside quests or wilderness areas (druids, rangers..)
- favor rewards
- finally you should be able to augment the feats by wearing special dark sun items, that raise its effectiveness or grant special bonuses or abilities

Other
Psionics
There is no reason to introduce Dark Sun if we are not also adding psionics or psionic classes to the game.
At least a psionic universal tree should be added.

Trade and Economy
Metals are extremely rare and valuable on Athas - if trade would ever be allowed the athasian economy would crash due to the huge influx of various metals. Just having copper, silver, gold and platina coins would mess things up, considering people on Athas use ceramic pieces as currency.

Scarcity and Survival
These are two major elements of the setting.
So maybe wilderness areas could apply stacks of dehydration. This is a debuff that reduces your stats based on the number of stacks you have. It can only be cured by drinking water. If you let your dehydration reach 10 stacks your character is slain. Undead, construct and elemental traits protect you from this effect.

Wilderness area
- should have multiple difficulty levels
- environmental hazards like like quicksand (that pulls you in and drowns you), heat, sandstorms.. etc
- hostile random encounters like raiders, slavers, hostile elven nomads, ambushing monsters, hunting packs.. etc
- beneficial rare encounters - merchant guild caravan, friendly elven nomads.. etc
- extremely rare legendary monsters that require a full party to beat - should have a small chance to drop unique loot, that also has visible cosmetic effects, so others could see that you have vanquished the monster

[fatherpirate]

In the end we all have to embrace one sad truth ... this is an MMO
(lol)

What I am getting at is that it is extremely difficult for SSG to embrace most of a campaign setting.
They can't just 'wing it' like a DM
EVERYTHING is set down in detail.

So the best we can hope for in a new campaign setting is a nice small slice of it.
Ravenloft is a perfect example, I love that expansion but it really just a small slice
of that campaign material.

So any campaign they do pick up will be represented as

1 public area
1-2 raids
1-3 outdoor explore areas (maybe)
6-12 adventures max

and various goodies to upsell packages

THAT IS IT

So if you know a campaign, you can pretty much guess what it will have
because it will fill that blueprint.

[Crazeyred]

It's not my responsibility to be constructive. As a paying customer it's is their responsibility to not release content that sucks.

Maybe what sucked to you didn't suck for everyone so speak for you....
Thanks ......

[Artos_Fabril]

I still think there are ways to implement Dark Sun.

That's a lot of systems layered on top of the buggy mess and multpile abandoned crafting systems DDO already has. I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze, and I'm one of the people who actually likes Dark Sun as a setting. That's why I just don't think DDO is the game to do it.

[Aelonwy]

I like Sharn most so far for the quest design, Ravenloft felt like it had stronger source material, good implementation, strong theme. Still trying to get the feel for Feywild, the quests are different, which is good for the first few times, not sure how it will hold up for the mass replays, the coming Raid instance has to be pretty incredible for me to say it was value for the money. I had to recall from a few quests because i spent a lot of time and it felt like some scripts didnt go in the intended flow, and so maybe made the quest stuck. So far i didnt see loot combinations that work well on my charisma casters, so also points for Sharn + Loft.

Yep, the Pixie village could have got some more use out of it, a nice highlight of the area

I really, really enjoy most of the Feywild and Feywild quests, my feelings about it are... not so much dissatisfaction as unsatisfied and while that may seem like a semantic difference its more connotation. I enjoy most everything I've seen and done out there but in comparison to the two previous expansions it feels shallow, like a meager portion size.

• Maybe not less quests, but shorter with less to do in most, less game time running the quests anyway.
• Wilderness Zone on the smaller side of things, thankfully they increased the MAX slayer but not enough IMHO.
• Only one saga.
• Only one raid... eventually.

Conclusion : I wanted more, I expected MORE... more to see, more to do, more to explore, more to read, more NPCs to speak to interwoven in the story. The saving grace of it for me is that the Lost Gatekeepers pack flows almost seamlessly into the Feywild. As an introductory set of quests it works much better as a prequel story than Disciples of Rage did for Sharn. Although both suffer from a feeling of NO conclusion. That is in Sharn we successfully retrieve the Stormreach Beacon but nothing and no one praises or rewards us for essentially saving the city from a plague of madness, and in Feywild we retrieve a bunch of codex pages (AGAIN! or wait... hold up... aren't most of the codex pages fetched for the Gatekeepers at higher levels? ToEE level 7, SL level 8, where did the Gatekeepers get the Codex Pages that were stolen by the Satyr Prince?) Anyways even after we finally achieve the main objective of the expansion, its not like anyone in Stormreach even notices. Talk about disheartening. These major storylines would have so much more impetus and impact to us as players if it felt like the story actually went somewhere and achieved something.

Speaking of Codex pages, I'm starting to get deja vu with them. I mean, come on anyone else notice its almost essentially the same thing as High Road?! "Oh please great adventurers - You must go collect all these Nether Scroll Pieces/Codex Pages. Its vitally important! So important they must be stolen away from us after you collect them and you must go get them again!" So not only does the main plot of Feywild mimic that of a higher level adventure pack... its basically a repeated theme of any adventure pack where these Codex Pages are involved. That more than anything probably contributes to this feeling that the Feywild is just a larger than normal adventure pack.

P.S. You know what makes some adventures great? Returning characters, so long as its not a protect that NPC scenario. Why is Issabet important to us? Returning character. Why do we like seeing Talbron and Jeets? Returning characters. Brawnpits? Returning character. What is best about the Anniversary quest? The return of every character we can shovel in there, maybe the tease of things to come. Feywild needed more returning characters. Maybe had one or two of the Lost Gatekeepers shown up in the Feywild to help or guide us it would have been more fulfilling. Or maybe if Dame Alonsa had shown up in Wynwood with advice or backstory, or if Joy could have appeared in Wynwood (after running the quests of course). Things like Baroness Bitterspine not recognizing us after we ran Frosty Reception just ruin it for me.

[kenawyn]

That's a lot of systems layered on top of the buggy mess and multpile abandoned crafting systems DDO already has. I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze, and I'm one of the people who actually likes Dark Sun as a setting. That's why I just don't think DDO is the game to do it.

Fair enough.
You might be right.

I would like to say a few words though:
I am glad you like Dark Sun, because I like it too

I have been both a DM and a player in several tabletop games set in the Dark Sun setting (2nd edition AD&D),
played the dos games (Dark Sun: Shattered Lands and Wake of the Ravager; can be found on GoG if anyone is interested)
and even played Dark Sun Online: Crimson Sands back in 1997

So, I too would like to see a proper adaptation.

Having said that - I have tried dozens of MMOs over the last 25 years and there were only a few I enjoyed as much as DDO.
IMHO this is the best real time multiplayer D&D experience out there at the moment.

I'm not denying that the game has issues and abandoned systems, but there are also some attempts to fix and improve them, even if they are somewhat buggy at release (ex.: augments getting adjusted to have same power as Cannith crafting).

And also there are times when I disapprove changes and additions,
like:
- The removal of the old pale master summons (plz give me back my caster skeleton)
- The massive power creep, that destroys any joy of finding loot. I don't know why but I still get happy feelings when i get an orange item from Zawabi's Revenge (just got the Torc after 7 years of farming, yay!)
- The removal of the monk unarmed damage dice. Handwraps giving +[W] just feels wrong to me and breaks my immersion. I could not play as an unarmed monk after this update.
- The Warlock class implementation. I will never play this garbage class. Luckily I don't have to.
- The Tiefling race aesthetics (WotC meddling). From the time I first played Party Crashers, I always wanted to play as a female tiefling wizard (in 3.5 they had an INT and DEX bonus), but not anymore... away with those bone headed freaks!
- The stealth nerf. Luckily I got to play an assassin before the changes and I really enjoyed it. It was like playing a more action oriented version of Thief (which is a great game, I highly recommend it)

Its not perfect, but it is still better then most other MMOs.

Arguably one of the best aspect of the game is build variance. This is unmatched at the moment and because of the PnP content it still has a tremendous potential to grow.

Here are some classes / enhancement trees I would like to see added to the game in the future:
- Spirit Shaman - low effort druid variant with spontaneous casting like the sorcerer and various spirit powers - sounds fun!
- Wu Jen - can be realized as a wizard enhancement tree; yay for taboos and spell secrets!
- Duelist - "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."; no armor, IQ to AC, dodge based, parry and counterattack - so much fun. Could be an universal tree.

And finally here is a harder to implement class with its own mechanics and powers, that is more relevant to the Dark Sun topic:
- Psionicist - I really like the 2nd edition implementation of psionics, because it's more unique. The 3.5 version is just a reskinned wizard using the Spell Point variant - we already have that, so 2nd edition all the way baby!
I might cobble together a suggestion for psionicist class concepts and powers. I don't want to create a detailed class description, because those rarely got any comments - probably too long and nobody reads it.

Dark Sun is the single best setting for Psionics, although I heard Eberron has a lot of native psionic stuff as well, including some psionic races and classes, so having more of that would also be nice. In fact I would advocate for more psionic content in Eberron, its just I do not know the campaign setting that well - never played Eberron in PnP.

While I have yet to pick up the Feywild expansion - not a big fan of fairy stuff - I am confident that the devs are doing their best to bring us new and enjoyable content. I hope the stuff I would like to see is on their todo list and will be released eventually.

I have faith in the developers.
They can do it.

[Ausdoerrt]

In the end we all have to embrace one sad truth ... this is an MMO
(lol)

What I am getting at is that it is extremely difficult for SSG to embrace most of a campaign setting.
They can't just 'wing it' like a DM
EVERYTHING is set down in detail.

So the best we can hope for in a new campaign setting is a nice small slice of it.
Ravenloft is a perfect example, I love that expansion but it really just a small slice
of that campaign material.

So any campaign they do pick up will be represented as

1 public area
1-2 raids
1-3 outdoor explore areas (maybe)
6-12 adventures max

and various goodies to upsell packages

THAT IS IT

So if you know a campaign, you can pretty much guess what it will have
because it will fill that blueprint.

Which is why instead of keep hopping between settings they should pick one (Eberron, of course) and stick with it.

Sharn can be expanded indefinitely and around it is a whole vibrant continent to explore. You know, kinda like how Stormreach was gradually built up. Let us ride on the lightning rail, do a different country / capital every expansion etc.

Even if they want to do more exotic settings, why not tie them to the existing one? I still can't get the xpack (store / customer support issues), but my understanding is that it's more classical Feywild than Eberron's Thelanis. Why not tie it properly?

[shores11]

I liked and still do like Feywild.

I would like to see the city of Cormyr added to Forgotten Realms.

[shmagmhar]

yeah lets not forget darksun would expand races and racial variants. I can think of at least 4or 5 , Thri-kreen , goliath , mull, the dwarves and halflings are different . Oh after looking it up there are actually way more than that .

I feel like whomever designed the demon sands was a fan of darksun . does anyone know if it was based on a DnD book or is demon sands original to DDO?

Brom is still alive! check out his art for the original darksun . maybe if darksun gets introduced for 5th Edition they will do it

[merkovah]

I'm on board with your opinion that mehwild sucked ...

and all these haters bashing on you don't matter.

Mehwild Sucked horribly and it reveals a sad state of the game.

The people who 'like' mehwild are missing the larger point. All they are capable of doing is ******** on people who they disagree with.

[merkovah]

yeah lets not forget darksun would expand races and racial variants. I can think of at least 4or 5 , Thri-kreen , goliath , mull, the dwarves and halflings are different . Oh after looking it up there are actually way more than that .

I feel like whomever designed the demon sands was a fan of darksun . does anyone know if it was based on a DnD book or is demon sands original to DDO?

Brom is still alive! check out his art for the original darksun . maybe if darksun gets introduced for 5th Edition they will do it

Darksun is one of the realms I keep hoping is added, I talk about it in group pretty often. It's also amazingly creative and not some disney ripoff.

[merkovah]

I really, really enjoy most of the Feywild and Feywild quests, my feelings about it are... not so much dissatisfaction as unsatisfied and while that may seem like a semantic difference its more connotation. I enjoy most everything I've seen and done out there but in comparison to the two previous expansions it feels shallow, like a meager portion size.

YES !!!!!!!! EXACTLY!!!!!!!!

Now why are people hating on anyone who points this out?!

Mehwild is lacking, it sucks, we all know it ... and while there are aspects to it that are neat ... its substandard.

There is nothing wrong with pointing that out!

[pSINNa]

I liked the Feywild expansion, i liked the Sharn expansion, i liked Keep on the Borderlands and the Ravenloft Expansion.

I still enjoy playing DDO, and am having fun with the massive variety in character types to be played, locations to explore, and quests and raids to play on through.

Opinions vary.

Coit out

[spyyder976]

Neverwinter only exists because the rights to that area are owned separately from basic D&D rights, which are held by this company. The only reason that SWG died with SWTOR came out is because Lucas didn't allow 2 competing Star Wars games out at once, which sucked!

The last expansion I purchased and liked was Ravenloft.
So why the unending river of ... meh?

Cost cutting, staff reductions.
Accountants replace editors.

Folks were asking why it takes so long for customer service.
I will take an educated guess, customer service staff has likely
been reduced to 1 person, or zero staff with developers taking
turns to put out the fires.

It all revolves around the fact that DDO is heading to retirement.
In a few years or months, I have no idea.

If a decent competitor that was a MMORPG D+D 3.5 rule set popped up,
this game would fold in a month.

What was left of SWG folded the moment SWTOR launched.

I am not being pessimistic, I am being realistic.
Enjoy the game, it will not be around forever.

also FYI Neverwinter online is not a direct competitor, the game play
is 100% different, literally.