Every reason why Update 49 is a disaster

[Jaxtan]

Perhaps we could benefit from a server that does not have TRing or reaper points. Success would be based on gear, skill and teamwork. HC comes closest to his now, which may be why it is so popular. It would also be more enjoyable for the rpg player. We could also see the real state of class balance and performance at end game after the nerfs every update.

[kanordog]

I think a more accurate representation is that those who play DDO with nerfs are those who focus on the bad and complain that their builds suck, and probably end up sticking with their build/build concept even when it's nerfed; and those who play DDO without nerfs are those who focus on the good and move with the meta, not really staying with one build but playing whatever's good. People who play whatever's good are more likely to focus on the new shiny thing where people who love a particular style or build concept and mostly play that thing are more likely to focus on changes to their build. Although, I guess that a lot of people who are playing whatever's good also complain when it's nerfed lol, probably before they realize that something else got buffed or before they actually try whatever got buffed.

Both styles are viable, I see people do both, I'm a bit more in the "play whatever's good" category atm because that's how I enjoy the game most. It makes me feel powerful and useful in groups and it makes for more diversity in what I play (I think I'd get bored playing the same thing all the time, personally).

The (next in line) character I lost in u49 was about 5-6 years old build with a single ETR. Really not a "new meta" build. Suddenly it became the cause of lag? And it was nerfed a few times before btw. I think if something is acceptable for YEARS should not be changed: build, belt, function no matter. They should focus on bug fixes instead.

[rabidfox]

Perhaps we could benefit from a server that does not have TRing or reaper points. Success would be based on gear, skill and teamwork. HC comes closest to his now, which may be why it is so popular. It would also be more enjoyable for the rpg player. We could also see the real state of class balance and performance at end game after the nerfs every update.

HC's permadeath makes risk/reward a thing; kind of like how reaper lockouts feels wicked when you're new (and likely soloing them) and wipe is a full instance reset. With a no TR/reaper server, one would quickly be parked a cap, geared, and have nothing to do (other than roll alt after alt which really isn't any different than the TR train, just a different kind of grind); I'm sure it would appeal to some people, but it'd get stagnant very fast for a lot of players.

[myliftkk_v2]

Both styles aren’t viable. DDO pushes their TR design to make money, but people who come to DDO thinking it’s DND tend to replicate what they enjoyed roleplaying, their favorite pen and paper character, or an archetype, or a fictional character they enjoyed like Drizz, Legolas, Raistlin, or w/e. You can tell them that they’re only clearing missions at half the speed on a lower difficulty because they aren’t playing the meta, but they didn’t come for the meta, they came because DDO is falsely pitched as an RPG, but really punishes roleplay in favor of rewriting your character every few weeks chasing after tiny bonuses or rewriting your character to a godmode ptw build, because monetized roleplay is apparently a less compelling product than what SSG is selling.

Is it less compelling or did DDO just choose not to make it so? It used to be far more compelling and there was no small amount of players playing that way, at the end game.

Now it's all run by the Big Buffy Bonus Bunch™ and that is, without a doubt, the most absolutely boring meta to many of us (and many, many that have left).

If I am gonna aim to play the godmode game, I'll just plug back into real life.

[myliftkk_v2]

alt after alt which really isn't any different than the TR train, just a different kind of grind.

Not remotely the same. Many of us have finite number of playstyles that are interesting to us. Alts are created for those styles and then just rotated through at cap for fun really unless a new playstyle comes along one likes and then launches another alt.

The idea that game players won't play a game for fun without constant upgrading rewards is discredited by the decades of sports games engagement across parks and streets everywhere where the vast majority of participants earn nothing, perish the thought, for engaging in them outside of a ephemeral "win" that has the longevity of the start of the next game. The reason DDO shrunk like it did is exactly because they catered to the microscopic segment of gaming players which are the acquisition-only power-focused crowd.

~450 million people play basketball globally
~250 million people play soccer globally
~65 million people play baseball/softball
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~11 million people play animal crossing
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A negligible amount of people play DDO to make any inferences whatsoever about a lot of anything.

[rabidfox]

~450 million people play basketball globally
~250 million people play soccer globally
~65 million people play baseball/softball

Sports are PvP and ideally fairly balanced teams to make it challenging and fun. I played Counter-Strike for years on a team and it always was lots of fun. Just need DDO to have balanced endgame PvP for it be a viable endgame thing.

~11 million people play animal crossing

Animal crossing is all about housing and decorations (which would be awesome if DDO had that). Even games like Warframe have "fashion frame" as their endgame where it's all about making cool looks (other games have the cosmetic thing as the big push too). There's plenty of non-power gain things DDO could have as endgame content, but doesn't. The current endgame model (/treadmill) is TRs and reaper content on harder settings; a server without those two things would need a major redesign for endgame to make it worthwhile long term, it wouldn't have to be power based or gated/tier difficulty, but it would need something added.

[Ulfo]

You can have no holds barred with a Great Crossbow rogue, it's called endless fusilade.

Ugh... my English really so bad or you just ****ing kidding me?

You totally missed my point. Irrelevant how exactly called options, no holds barred or endless fusilade, because only Arty/Inqui can use it, not AArcher or Shuri-thrower, Alchemist or other thrower builds, and all such builds cannot hold primary weapon in both hand. Therefore, your statement about proc-builds still viable is simply stupid and useless. Your single fotm build still viable just because exploiting enormous proc-rate with double hand grip +barrel/fusilade. Other proc builds, was viable before U49 nerf, absolutely non-viable currently because not have enough proc-rate.

Did you also miss the part where the Great Crossbow starts off at lvl 1 with the Inquisitive capstone knockdown? That's a 5% chance per hit to do a no DC knock down.

Why you think i miss it? It just same irrelevant, because usable only with barrel/fusilade exploiting, unavailable for other than Arty/Inqui builds.

As far as productive discussions, the changes aren't being reversed.

Yea, it's singe true sentention in all your stream of consciousness... 8)

[Aelonwy]

Animal crossing is all about housing and decorations (which would be awesome if DDO had that). Even games like Warframe have "fashion frame" as their endgame where it's all about making cool looks (other games have the cosmetic thing as the big push too). There's plenty of non-power gain things DDO could have as endgame content, but doesn't. The current endgame model (/treadmill) is TRs and reaper content on harder settings; a server without those two things would need a major redesign for endgame to make it worthwhile long term, it wouldn't have to be power based or gated/tier difficulty, but it would need something added.

They need to make cosmetics easier/more convenient to use and store for that sort of activity to be considered worthwhile for the majority of players. Cosmetic pet tab and Mount Stable are a sensible step in the right direction. If they want wearable cosmetics to achieve that sort of desirability and profitability they will need to redesign them on the back end to have a similar anywhere-anytime-any character wardrobe function. That they did not design them with that sort of user convenience in-mind from the start? *shrugs* I don't know, beats me.

Now I personally have a storage alt just for cosmetics but the majority of people are just not going to go to that effort. And even I get frustrated sometimes looking for the exact Mirrored item I want, or having to relog from my Cosmetic Storage to the alt that I wanted to wear X item, etc. I can only imagine people for whom cosmetics aren't particularly important... just ignoring them because its too much of a hassle.

If they made it so you could add the cosmetics you own to a menu allowing your account to have a greater variety of cosmetic choices at any time on any character without making them an inventory glut... it would make them vastly more appealing to a greater portion of the population.

[Karthunk]

Yea, it's singe true sentention in all your stream of consciousness... 8)

Here is my final true sentence for you: deal with the changes because they aren't changing. Fin.

[myliftkk_v2]

Sports are PvP and ideally fairly balanced teams to make it challenging and fun. I played Counter-Strike for years on a team and it always was lots of fun. Just need DDO to have balanced endgame PvP for it be a viable endgame thing.

Animal crossing is all about housing and decorations (which would be awesome if DDO had that). Even games like Warframe have "fashion frame" as their endgame where it's all about making cool looks (other games have the cosmetic thing as the big push too). There's plenty of non-power gain things DDO could have as endgame content, but doesn't. The current endgame model (/treadmill) is TRs and reaper content on harder settings; a server without those two things would need a major redesign for endgame to make it worthwhile long term, it wouldn't have to be power based or gated/tier difficulty, but it would need something added.

Sports are all over the map, and I say that as a heavy, heavy, amateur sports player of pickup games. As in, well into the thousands, if not ten thousand+. Everything from pure fun to competitive, with the majority leaning towards fun vs challenging. Considering the additional tons of hours spent playing basketball essentially PvNoOne, calling sport PvP is also a reductionist misstatement. They often are both.

Yes, Animal Crossing is not about the big numbers bunch, my exact point. And it dwarfs DDO.

Catering to the super duper crit crowd at the expense of flexibility and variability in playstyle has cost DDO potential fans, end stop. Using the term "people may leave" to counterweigh arguments in this faction's favor misstates them as anything but a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of tiny of fraction game players in any grouping we want to assemble.

[Weemadarthur]

Sports are all over the map, and I say that as a heavy, heavy, amateur sports player of pickup games. As in, well into the thousands, if not ten thousand+. Everything from pure fun to competitive, with the majority leaning towards fun vs challenging. Considering the additional tons of hours spent playing basketball essentially PvNoOne, calling sport PvP is also a reductionist misstatement. They often are both.

Yes, Animal Crossing is not about the big numbers bunch, my exact point. And it dwarfs DDO.

Catering to the super duper crit crowd at the expense of flexibility and variability in playstyle has cost DDO potential fans, end stop. Using the term "people may leave" to counterweigh arguments in this faction's favor misstates them as anything but a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of tiny of fraction game players in any grouping we want to assemble.

Sorry as I agree with most of your posts but this I'm sorry to say is beyond clutching at straws and is actually counterproductive to your argument. If you are going to compare an RPG to something at least compare it to something thats also an RPG. Comparing DDO to soccer, basketball or animal crossing is not going to achieve anything as your not even comparing apples and oranges. Its more like comparing apples and space shuttles. There is absolutely no correlation between the 2.

As for DDO's population there are many reasons people have left over the years. A very small percentage will have left due to anything to do with powercreep. Now don't get me wrong that small percentage is still going to be a hefty number but will likely be dwarfed by the amount that have left due to burnout for example. The population problem here has nothing to do with game play, powercreep, catering to any particular group, nerfs or buffs. It is purely down to the lack of marketing this game has suffered with since day 1. It doesn't matter how good a game is if no-one knows it exists. No marketing means minimal new blood and that has to compete with the same player attrition all games suffer with.

[Valerianus]

[Jerevth]

BPiT (Best Post in Thread) Nominee

[myliftkk_v2]

Sorry as I agree with most of your posts but this I'm sorry to say is beyond clutching at straws and is actually counterproductive to your argument. If you are going to compare an RPG to something at least compare it to something thats also an RPG. Comparing DDO to soccer, basketball or animal crossing is not going to achieve anything as your not even comparing apples and oranges. Its more like comparing apples and space shuttles. There is absolutely no correlation between the 2.

As for DDO's population there are many reasons people have left over the years. A very small percentage will have left due to anything to do with powercreep. Now don't get me wrong that small percentage is still going to be a hefty number but will likely be dwarfed by the amount that have left due to burnout for example. The population problem here has nothing to do with game play, powercreep, catering to any particular group, nerfs or buffs. It is purely down to the lack of marketing this game has suffered with since day 1. It doesn't matter how good a game is if no-one knows it exists. No marketing means minimal new blood and that has to compete with the same player attrition all games suffer with.

All are games, and games roughly operate under the same broad theories.

Burnout does not in any way indicate the causation. Each of these elements, "game play, powercreep, catering to any particular group, nerfs or buffs" can be, and probably is, a contributor to burnout. Constantly changing rulesets are in fact, a contributor to burnout. Consider the most stable form of "gaming" entertainment choices and rank the stability of their rulesets. You'll find the rulesets almost certainly cluster around high stability.

Aka people don't like change.

Marketing is a contributor, sure, but we also live in a viral world now. DDO does not appear to sustain any form of viral marketing via word of mouth, an indictment of more than just the lack marketing department. It's easier than every to "discover" the good anything anymore (unlike in previous generations) with a few pointed queries. So the longer DDO goes without natural ramping growth from it's "how good a game" claim, the more the theory of "how good a game it is" gets called into question.

[Ausdoerrt]

It is purely down to the lack of marketing this game has suffered with since day 1. It doesn't matter how good a game is if no-one knows it exists. No marketing means minimal new blood and that has to compete with the same player attrition all games suffer with.

Not true. Marketing is what gets you new players, but once you have these players you need retention. Remember the huge inflow when all quests were made free? Well, where are all those players now?

In the end, marketing is just the first step of the customer journey, then all the other things come into play: new player experience / first impressions, customer service and support, technical issues with download and installation, technical issues with the store etc. etc. Sometimes it seems like DDO is doing as little as possible to help new players stick around.

Marketing is even less relevant for retaining the older core player base, which is a lifeline for old games like DDO.

P.S. Doesn't mean you need to cater to the loud players' every whim though