A Letter from Executive Producer Rob Ciccolini – February 2021

[Arkat]

It's already been solo'd multiple times on Hard. Maybe you with your two other friends could try it on Normal.

Sounds reasonable to me.

[Oxarhamar]

Happy 15th Anniversary DDO! We are excited to reach this milestone and are ever-thankful to our players for making this possible. Today I'll be talking about some of our plans for the rest of the year and letting you know what we are looking forward to.

In the coming weeks we will be celebrating in House Phiarlan as we bring out an updated Anniversary Event! This year's event features a few minor updates to the challenge itself along with a large number of new items added to the reward list. We're bringing back all of the House-specific Eberron Cloaks in the rewards list that we gave out a few years ago for our anniversary, in case you missed one or missed it, and we're adding a new cosmetic helm and cosmetic pet as well. We're also going to be distributing two special gifts to everyone! One will be something your character will wear as a cosmetic, and the other is something your character will equip.

The release of the new raid, The Dryad and the Demigod, marks the grand finale of the Fables of the Feywild expansion. This raid features the music of our in-house composer Bill Champagne and we think it is a raid unlike any other you may have seen before. The idea of a “musical raid” has been kicking around for a while in the office, and we think players of all types will find something special here. Anyone who has purchased Fables of the Feywild will have access to this new raid.

This spring brings the first Hardcore League season of 2021 to the game! Our 4th Hardcore Season will feature some new and returning guests in the form of the minions of the Nine Daelkyr Lords. You’ve met the Lord of Eyes and the Lord of Stone, but have you met the rest? We're also planning to run a 5th season of the Hardcore League later this year.

This spring will also bring Update 49 that includes four dungeons where you will help Morgrave University hunt down lost relics in a series of adventures that feel somewhat “Indiana Jones-like”. Alongside this adventure pack the bow combat style is being revamped and will get new animations.

This summer will see the release of the first "mini-expansion" in Dungeons & Dragons Online in the form of the Classic Adventure: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh! An evil Alchemist's mansion stands alone on a cliff and mysterious lights and hauntings have kept people away despite rumors of great treasure. What is the secret? Debuting alongside this classic adventure will be our next Universal Enhancement Tree called Horizon Walker, which focuses on marking and neutralizing extra-planar and other enemies with a bow. As we get closer to the release of Saltmarsh, we will have more information about what to expect from a DDO mini-expansion, the lessons that we learned from The Lord of the Rings Online’s first mini-expansion last year, and plans to give more value to VIPs.

The fall will feature a set of new adventures and a raid revolving around the Wild Hunt as well as a significant update to our Epic Destiny system. We are restructuring the core of the system, modernizing some trees and redesigning others, and making Epic Destinies more versatile by allowing players to have multiple Destinies active at the same time.

Other things to look forward to this year include a new Monster Manual volume, a free dungeon to wrap up the year, updates to our various festivals, and more! We want to thank you for continuing to make this game and community thrive, and we look forward to making 2021 a fantastic year for DDO!

Sev

What were the lessons learned from Lotro because, bringing that mess to DDO shows that lessons were not learned.

[rfachini]

There’s no harm in letting hirelings in raids. They are not particularly overpowered.
Casual raids would be great. Just lower or eliminate the loot drops.

PS also please fix familiars movement rate.

[donblas]

It's already been solo'd multiple times on Hard. Maybe you with your two other friends could try it on Normal.

Did anyone who did that have reaper advantages or past lives?

Important information.

[Gljosh]

The "Epic Destiny" redesign, this will be a large change related to End-Game and the work that was gone into builds. Please release this information at a time during the development cycle when there is ample time to gather and respond to player feedback. Much of the End-Game experience has been crafted around the current Epic Destiny concept (coming close to 10 years with the current system), if these are not properly balanced much of the gameplay will be greatly effected and with it an exodus of players.

[Ewynn]

Sev,

Appreciate what you’re working on for this year, but it seems kind of tone deaf to me. I like new content as much as the next adventurer; however, I think that you are missing some key gripes from the community. LAG, continue to fix and report on what you are doing to address lag. Recent fixes helped a lot, moae may need to be done. Do something with TR caches, make them sortablem expand shared bank, or individual bank to make items easier to find.

Incentivise players to play alts. I’ve basically finished the game, other than the last 50 reaper points. I’m NOT doing the grind on another character for all lives, so give me a reason to continue to play as a different class, etc. Once I’ve got everything thing done, give me account wide abilities that let me change classes, or let me share my reaper points with alts, something where I don’t have to grind it out again. I guess what i’m saying is get inventive about your endgame, more grind isn’t it.

[Duhboy]

...let me share my reaper points with alts, something where I don’t have to grind it out again. I guess what i’m saying is get inventive about your endgame, more grind isn’t it.

Couldn't agree with you more.

An account based reaper system sounds pretty interesting especially for newly created alts making where you don't HAVE to do the hamster wheel grind in order to get reaper points for them.

[puberdade]

I've seen a game I loved die and I can see the similarities here.
The game was marvel heroes omega and the main issue was lack of content for old timers.
The thing is, they managed to get new players (even tried a desperate release on console), but the heavy spenders were the veterans that were lacking content to keep spending. With all the incentives to new players (like the free DDO store points for favor) the veterans usually do not have much reason to spend much more as they acquired most of the stuff they need and new players aren't hooked enough to do so. To make things worse there is a high barrier to new players here, getting hooked takes time because the game systems are complex, and the money inflow from investing in new players take too long to come.
We need to talk about money making with SSG because if they do not make money the game is over. Simple as that. We, the ones that love the game, do not mind paying the bills, as long as we are getting reasonable content for it. Diminshing VIP advantages (VIP is great for people in between veterans and new players) and try to sell packs doesnt seem like a good strategy for the long term.

We need a new agreement between players and SSG about whats good for everyone. I like paying a fixed reasonable fee and get all content I need whithout having to pay "extra" for new and powerful content. It's even worse when the content I have access, as a paying player, gets nerfed to create a need to buy those new packs.

If SSG needs to rise their revenue I can think of a few things that sounds more fair for both sides:
- Adjust VIP price. I know it is pricey already when compared to other games, but if its necessary to keep the game alive w/o pushing us to buy extras, it wouldnt be so bad
- Raise level cap. New level cap = new content that doesnt unbalance old content, paid expansions for higher lv cap and so on
- Segment players and create signatures for each bracket to get an increasingly commitement. For example, I really like to play heroics and TR and I don't want to mess with epics until I get racial completionist, I could have a different signature than people raiding at 30. Also, new players could have a lower signature w/o epics until 3rd TR or something
- Segment players by region and adjust prices accordingly. I know fellow south americans who dropped the signature because the dollar got too pricey down here. For example, the price of Blizzard in Brazilian Reais is lower than it is in U$ Dollars if it was directly converted. Just for the example, the VIP of DDO is around R$ 70 while the signature of WOW is around R$ 35 in Brazil.
- Focus new paid content on players that expend the most. What do they want? New raid? New level cap? Give those guys whatever they want for a reasonable price and the rest will follow

Whatever you do, it needs to be clear with everyone what the new deal will be, and that it will be necessary to keep the game going.

If you keep gating content behind paywalls while depreciating old content an the paying player base do not go togheter with you, you will end up like Marvel Heroes Omega

[blarhblarhblarh]

and plans to give more value to VIPs.


Sev

Still waiting for it. Please include a way to use cellphone or whatsapp for comunications at least for vip players. Spend a week online waiting for support and the staff still closed my ticket without any help.



And if you have the time please take a look here: I spend almost two months of vip, many slayer pots and xp pots to solve an epic destinie bug while trying to contact the support. When support came I had already fix it but didn´t got my vip time or pots back. This is not am exception in DDO´s custumer support.



https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...onse-Time-quot

[Arkat]

Still waiting for it. Please include a way to use cellphone or whatsapp for comunications at least for vip players. Spend a week online waiting for support and the staff still closed my ticket without any help.



And if you have the time please take a look here: I spend almost two months of vip, many slayer pots and xp pots to solve an epic destinie bug while trying to contact the support. When support came I had already fix it but didn´t got my vip time or pots back. This is not am exception in DDO´s custumer support.



https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...onse-Time-quot

You didn't like the amazing 10% off the purchase price of Saltmarsh?

I saved $2!!!

[Oxarhamar]

You didn't like the amazing 10% off the purchase price of Saltmarsh?

I saved $2!!!

Yeah the discount on something that should have been free for vip Woooooo

[Dandonk]

Still waiting for it.

Heh, yeah. The only thing they learned from the "mini-expansions" outrage was that they can get away with anything.