Read more about our plans for the year in a new Producer's Letter!

[mrfantastic1]

This is about what was expected. The bar is so low for this game. What is surprising is that people still put up with this. Seriously folks, move on. You can retain all relationships you've developed through this game quite easily in the 21st century. There is no other reason to play this game anymore.

I would like to hear your thoughts on the letter I crafted here:

https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...oducers-Letter

I am interested if the letter was more in this direction what your thoughts would be. I realize I did not cover all issues.

Humbly,

Fellow Player1

[Baahb3]

If the plan was to increase DDO's population by 10x and merge all the servers, then one of those might be possible to fill

No, I'm talking about questing. Sure you can create artificial challenges by soloing or attempting to find enough people to raid push, but most players would prefer to play in ~6 person groups. R10, which is supposed to be the hardest difficulty, does not provide a real challenge for 6 person groups at all.

You want your challenge back? Get rid of the Reaper trees. Nuke 'em. They should never have been made. Reaper points should net you no character power, only cosmetics, titles, wings, special mounts, etc.

It baffles me to this day why people don't understand the absurdity of making a difficulty setting to challenge good/great players and then as a reward, a system to make said content easier.

[Kelledren]

I might be poster #57 and I have yet to read a positive response to this letter.
It lacks in style and content itself and in innovation for game changes. It would have been wiser to just post the graphic or to not post at all.

Totally wasted 5 min coffee break.

Titus.

There is nothing positive because there is nothing to this letter except for the festivals and that there will be 4 updates, one of which is a mini expansion on Vecna… which we already knew. I’ll write next years Producers letter right now: There will be four updates in 2024- one will be either a mini expansion or expansion early in the year, an adventure pack later in 2024, a couple hardcore seasons, and all the normal DDO festivals. It’s really not that much less information than what we just got.

For some reason they are holding future plans so tight to the vest, which is providing ZERO excitement. Yeah it took a couple years to deliver IoD from when it was first mentioned, but that gave the community something to be excited about. Yeah things happen and sometimes plans are delivered late or even canned completely, but right now your asking us to be excited about a black void of nothingness. Live on the edge and tell us your current ideas on the raid or adventure pack at a minimum. Create some enthusiasm. Last year’s Producers letter I remember thinking was fun and created enthusiasm. This one….

[thebeast1985]

HOLY CANNOLI.

This letter is such a luckuster.

SSG did NOTHING to even try to win leaving players back.

This is not an epic fail. its of such much bigger proportions that I can't even find the right words to describe such INCOMMENSURABLE fail.

And as for you, dear Cordovan, instead of replying trying to make up for the laughable mistake your company did for VIP...

Do as Hasbro is doing for D&D.

SAY NOTHING...

Things will stettle and fix by itself (if you believe it frimly enough)

HAPPY 2023!


EDIT P.S: Placing "seasonal events" to thicken the things you are putting on the plate... for real? this is not a Battle Royale, we know how to read and to think...

[Monkey_Archer]

You want your challenge back? Get rid of the Reaper trees. Nuke 'em. They should never have been made. Reaper points should net you no character power, only cosmetics, titles, wings, special mounts, etc.

It baffles me to this day why people don't understand the absurdity of making a difficulty setting to challenge good/great players and then as a reward, a system to make said content easier.

The problem with this is a matter of incentive. The number of people that will intentionally challenge themselves for no reward are a small minority. Players also want to see real progress, not only challenge.

So the reward incentive needs to be there. The issue is that the rewards vastly out pace the challenge available. Why does reaper difficulty arbitrarily stop at 10? Getting small increments in power is good, we just need much larger increments in difficulty to keep up with the power creep.

[Dandonk]

MY take-away from the twitch: They would like to do something for VIPs, but don't know if their idea is doable, and no idea when it might appear. Joy. Marginably more concrete, but still disappointing result after they had an entire year to look at it.

[Memnir]

We know players are asking us to talk about our VIP program, and we'll have more to share when we can. We've been reading and discussing your feedback in recent weeks, and we look forward to providing more information in the future.

Isn't this pretty much what y'all said last year?


*sigh*

Really glad I didn't try the "wait and see what the PL says" route. This and the Producer's Letter is simply anemic, to put it as nicely and politely as possible.

[rabidfox]

I just want to see "Q2 Ravenloft ultimate is coming back to the store so you can finally buy your bottle of mist" added to that timeline.

[Gljosh]

Legendary Droaam with a raid-ok I like those quest packs.

No increase to the Level Cap-AWESOME!

Mini X-pac, well I haven't played the older mini x-pac, so I guess I can same some money there.

Quarterly Festivals-cool

More Archetypes-ok, I still haven't played the ones that were released.

I am whelmed.

[mikarddo]

I am not amused and I am certainly not impressed. Where is the hype?

Ok, the good part - a raid update. I am looking forward to that. But just one raid the entire year, or does the mini-expansion atleast include a raid as well?

Now for the meh to bad stuff:

1) More archtypes without also adding more epic lives does not work well for me. Now, if archtypes worked with iconics that would be fine but seeing they dont we need more epic lives in equal measure to archtypes for it to work.

2) Why are archtypes free to all? These should be free to VIP and come at a price to others.

3) Another mini-expansion? These packs should be free to VIP! Either make a full expansion and charge for that - or make it free for VIP.

4) More of the same HCL and Festivals. Ok, thats fine, but thats nothing to write about. Those are fully expected and nothing great.

5) ONE actual pack for VIPs.... /sadface

6) Nothing more on banking? The inventory system is very poor - finding anything is a chore. Which items across my characters has those Master Gifts augments? The banking update we did get was far from a real solution.

[ahpook]

No increase to the Level Cap-AWESOME!

They didn't actually say there would be no cap increase. They didn't actually say much. Your statement would be making assumptions based on what wasn't said.

I am whelmed.

I think you just won the most positive review of the producer's letter. Congrats. ("Congrats" is your prize. It is agreed that your prize is less than what is deserved and there are ongoing discussions about improving your prize. At some point in the future an announcement will be provided about any improvements in your prize.)

[rabidfox]

They didn't actually say there would be no cap increase. They didn't actually say much. Your statement would be making assumptions based on what wasn't said.

They said 2 level increase every other year with full expansions on the stream; with a mini-expansion and no level bump on the years in-between.

[ahpook]

They said 2 level increase every other year with full expansions on the stream; with a mini-expansion and no level bump on the years in-between.

I came late to the stream and missed that. Or maybe it was mentioned after I got on but while I was distracted.

If only they had a letter from the producer or something where they could put cool info like that. Someplace where anyone could easily read it at their convenience. If only....

[thegreatcthulhu]

We know players are asking us to talk about our VIP program, and we'll have more to share when we can. We've been reading and discussing your feedback in recent weeks, and we look forward to providing more information in the future.

Thank you for the time you took to make this reply.

I am not trying to read too much into Rob's words on the stream when he made reference to macro-economic woes, but I think I see why there's more to this story than you can say. That aside, I think there are enough patient people.

[Valerianus]

We know players are asking us to talk about our VIP program, and we'll have more to share when we can. We've been reading and discussing your feedback in recent weeks, and we look forward to providing more information in the future.

thank you for saying that. i personally don't care, i'm no vip, but i thank you for communicating.

you know, thinking about communication, i feel bad for this post of yours, it will be quoted with a lot of follow-up bashing. i mean, you are doing your job, but i'm thinking, i can't help it, this is a thread about the producer's letter. can't the producer, like, write a nice(r) letter and than stay online just a couple of hours, like, something that happens once a year, like, staying online just a couple of hours once a year, i mean, it would be cool if after a nice(r) producer's letter, wrote by the producer, the producer maybe can stay online to answer the follow-up. like, spark some interest while withholding some info on purpose, and use said withholded info in the answers. a simple game. you write 80% of the info in the letter with the intent to share 100% of the planned info while answering the follow-up by the community. win-win on a lot of levels with minimal effort. we would be fooled into thinking you are reading and listening and communicating and we would be even happy about it.

but no.

after the myth "ddo has no marketing" you are giving birth to another myth, "ddo has no producer"

respectfully speaking, read this whole post as a sort of my personal stream of consciousness, born from reading this thread.

i mean, look, the letter talks about a raid and it got 0% interest, but the epic communication fail this letter represent, it would have been better no letter at all, 100% negative feedback. tomorrow i don't know how Severlin will repeat the same "we are working on vip stuff" again with a straight face. bad situaton, bad position to be into. yeah part of the job, but bad nonetheless. if really this letter was supposed to be so bad, was it that hard to at least to publish it after the interview with the executive producer and not just one day before? couldn't ssg forsee the backleash? we know ssg is a small team, and we accept that a small team can do only so much, and we are grateful for your job. i personally am aware what means to push forward a (in my case a really small) business with limited manpower. the sacrifices you have to do. but you are basically showing us that your business is not functioning. your producer letter, it was not written by the producer. it's a placeholder in lieu of...nothing. with a pic of a roadmap in some tredyish style that if you take out the obvious stuff what's left is nothing. as i was saying, even in my personal case of a really really really small small small business, the projection to the customers that we have control, concept, organization, it's critical, and it happens. why can't you do the same? i don't mean the real thing, it's difficult, i mean the projection of it.

this producer letter looks like an epitaph on a gravestone, no one in office realize it? you are showing us you have no control. we are in no position to really know if you have it or not, i mean you are showing us that you have no control on your chance to fool us into thinking that you have control instead of not having it.

i think Cordovan realize it, community manager, why should the community manager do damage control on producer letter...what about the others? like, e.g. the producer?


this is not intended as an attack to ssg as a whole or to any ssg employee. i am not attacking anyone. i am not attacking the producer, i have zero interst in doing so. actually, eventually i have only to lose in doing so. i am just looking at the elephant in the room, please, think about it, i'm just saying out loud what i see and what i hear, what a lot of players are saying, writing, thinking, seeing, considering.......and that is:

dear ssg, if you are not even able to fool us, locked-up players eager to be fooled, what are you thinking you are doing?

[Captain_Wizbang]

you want your challenge back? get rid of the reaper trees. Nuke 'em. They should never have been made. Reaper points should net you no character power, only cosmetics, titles, wings, special mounts, etc.

it baffles me to this day why people don't understand the absurdity of making a difficulty setting to challenge good/great players and then as a reward, a system to make said content easier.

/\ /\ /\
this

[systemshaker1941]

They said 2 level increase every other year with full expansions on the stream; with a mini-expansion and no level bump on the years in-between.

So its going to take 10 years to get the cap raised to level 40?

At the rate people are leaving this game, it does not have 10 years.

[systemshaker1941]

i think Cordovan realize it, community manager, why should the community manager do damage control on producer letter...what about the others? like, e.g. the producer?

This was not damage control. More like casual damage observation. Ain't nobody on damage control.

2023 is going to be a dumpster fire for DDO.

[Annex]

In my opinion, this very conservative document reflects a desire to avoid the problems of last year.

When Tolero openly talked about expanding subscriber benefits she created a huge amount of player expectation. She continues to pay for that rookie move in player dissatisfaction. When the people at Standing Stone Games do get around to adjusting subscriber benefits, it will very probably not be enough and more complaining will follow. Giving out gold rolls every day for the better part of a year without charging for it was super unwise, setting player expectations way too high.

The very aggressive release schedule last year resulted in a tidal wave of bugs and many unhappy players. A more conservative release schedule will probably result in more time to polish and less bugs. However, only a fool would promise less bugs. The result is a bunch of players complaining about the more sparse release schedule they asked for.

Hardcore seems to make more players happy than unhappy and probably generates a lot of revenue so we get more Hardcore. They are following the money.

Many players asked for more Vecna so we are getting more Vecna. No surprise there.

Many players like Archetypes so we are getting more Archetypes. No surprise there.

The level cap raise is contentious so they are rolling it out slowly. No surprise there.

They release about 20 quests a year. This schedule includes about 20 quests. No surprise there.

A fair number of players want all development to stop to fix bugs. This schedule is a step in that direction.

Only a fool would make a concrete promise about lag. The answer to all lag questions is, "we are working on it". No surprise there.

If things go well, this schedule leaves them room to push for a surprise or two. They cannot talk about such things because if they promise and fail, players will attack them.

Many of you complain that this document contains no surprises. You also complain that the people at Standing Stone Games never communicate with you. Well, apparently, they communicated their plans so completely that this document reflects what they already communicated because their is nothing left to communicate. You got your wish.

In 2022, the people at Standing Stone Games delivered many major updates to game systems. A lot of complaints ensured. Now they want to settle things down in 2023, which is exactly what many players asked for.

Very conservative. Very sedate. Follow through on things already started. Get that done before tearing up more stuff.

Now a bunch of you will tell me the problem is that the people at Standing Stone Games never work on the right things. You are right, because players as a body do not agree on anything accept lag.

I wish the people at Standing Stone Games much good luck in 2023. I hope players enjoy the new archetypes and quests and festival prizes and Hardcore rewards and Raid updates. I hope you are able to kill more bugs and win some victories against the lag monster. I hope you find a way to make players happy, even when they do not agree with one another. I hope a star of supreme good lights your path to wisdom, prosperity, and success.

[ahpook]

.... we know ssg is a small team, and we accept that a small team can do only so much, and we are grateful for your job. i personally am aware what means to push forward a (in my case a really small) business with limited manpower. the sacrifices you have to do. but you are basically showing us that your business is not functioning. your producer letter, it was not written by the producer. it's a placeholder in lieu of...nothing. ...

Good note. On this point I will say that a small team is restricted on what it can do. It cannot rewrite the engine. It cannot not dump out new content every month. It cannot solve all the rule problems that have crept in over the year. One thing it can do is have good communication with its players, sharing what it can and cannot do and why things can be a challenge. Yet SSG chooses not to. Its like they never recovered from their year in hiding leading up to the Free to Play transition. They would rather have a p-o'ed player base than the occasional difficult conversation.