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

[ahpook]

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.

...
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.
... .

And if most of this was in the producer letter it would have been a far more satisfying letter. Why does a player come and need to do the job of filling in the blanks of an underwritten producer letter? I am thinking right now that you, Annex, have done more thinking about this game than the producer.

[Captain_Wizbang]

I watched maybe 5 minutes of stream until I heard the answer about ViP.
As I predicted in Aeol's thread ... "Announcement in Jan, with the new perk in March."

well, AFTER ONE YEAR. YOU DON'T HAVE AN ANSWER?

I can't give you any grade, not even an F. To earn an F, you would have had to produced some type/ ANY answer to our requests (not demands) for some type of new or improved ViP perk, no answer no grade, COMPLETE FAIL.

You want to take content I already own, and sell it back it back to me? FAIL.

You have seen the last of any money from this player, Boot me from here, do whatever, I don't care anymore about a tiny social media site than you do about any of our collective gripes.

Way to go SSG, can't even score an F.

I don't see this game making it past Q3 of 2023'.

[Kelledren]

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.

Is the raid related to legendary Droam? I’m not sure we even know that. It’s just in the same quarter. Is the raid related to the mini-expansion (doubt it), or is it just a refurbished ToD or Titan? This is the kind of information missing from the PL.

[xaxaeb]

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.

Not charging? What is $15/mo for VIP if not charging?
Brother, are you high right now?
There used to be content "free for VIP". We haven't had any of that in a long time. All the content lately is either free for all, or buy for all.
We get 500 TPs per month.... mind you, 600 of them cost $8 Let's consider being able to skip a quest for sagas the difference here.
Tiny exp boost, which isn't all that relevant with the amount of quests available.

The moment SSG moved away from adventure packs and toward "mini expansions" - VIP lost its value.
We're essentially being charged double for what's still left. So don't tell me that we were getting gold rolls and not being charged for them.

Did Tolero make a mistake? Yeah, I've been in her shoes and made similar mistakes at work.
But there would still be dissatisfaction with the current state of VIP regardless of her statement.

[Assassination]

If you think the producers letter is bad, watch Cordo and Sev muck it up for 45 minutes.... lol... hysterical. No wonder this game is in the tiolet.

[cmecu]

Cant believe SSG is just glossing over our inventory issues. We have no bank space .. and you all are making more expansions and quests , which means even more items.. Come on all ready... Why are you all being so quiet about this, when people are complaining about it. Its a complete disrespect to us as players, when you give us so many items in the game and we have no space to put it and then you dont acknowledge the issue and say your all working on it. Its really sad.

[systemshaker1941]

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.

Literally all she had to do was follow through on time, even if it was just something simple. If the end of daily gold roles coincided with "We're up VIP XP to 25% and the monthly point allowance to 750" ALLLL of this ire could have been avoided. If she took one of the 100 other easily implementable suggestions. Hell, even if she just came right out and said "We don't have a plan yet, but we are working on it" the same day the gold roles ended.

This is the worst handling of anything in the game's history.

[Villefere]

Event we do every year
New pack
New Hardcore Season
Event we do every year

Could this roadmap be anymore vague, boring and unexciting?

[capsela]

What no full price expansion??? You have to do that every year you know to maximize whale harvest.



Make sure you nerf everything in the new expansion before I even get a chance to play it.

[Roberdt]

I feel like if we would have gotten pictures of, I don't know giant robots, or spaceships in this year's producer letter; like we got dinosaurs in last year's, there would have been more positive feedback.

[Damian]

anything done with reaper cap?

[capsela]

Yeah this feels like a non-letter....like it's just a bunch of fluff just to have "a letter" but doesn't actually convey any info that hasn't already been said for a while

Also I'm still fuzzy on what a mini expansion means, besides "we're going to do less but still charge you full price"

DDO is the most expensive game to play ever. I'm sorry but I don't know what it is about DDO that makes you think you can justify higher prices than almost ANY MMO. It makes me think you are abusing your playerbase with these prices. No wonder [redacted] exploits are rampant, at the "other forum". Nobody can afford even basic QOL stuff from the DDO store. I'm actually sorry for the VIPs. I've NEVER subscribed, but I know how much VIPs have been used and abused. I can't believe they have stayed this long. A sizeable amount of the playerbase is clearly codependent. But, can't leave their abuser. DDO prices are abuse.

[dunklezhan]

a Legendary revamp of Droaam content

Is there any chance - any chance at all - of actually finishing that storyline off for us? I know I know I know you want and need to pad out* the high level content, but I've been waiting for you to tell more of the story of the sisters of Sora Kell, and the invasion of one of the most interesting Khorvarian civilisations for what, ten years now? Pleeeeeeeease.

Come on we've got a whole triple pack of Xoriat (and very enjoyable it is too) the least you could do is give the monster nation its due

*"Pad out" isn't really a criticism, just recognition of what you inevitably will need to do in order to raise the cap. Repetition of existing content used to be 100% of epic+ play so it's an improvement on circa 2012 for sure, and I of course understand why "polish what we've got" rather than make new is how you have to proceed most of the time. But epic/legendary is my least favourite content area for that same reason.

[dunklezhan]

DDO is the most expensive game to play ever. I'm sorry but I don't know what it is about DDO that makes you think you can justify higher prices than almost ANY MMO. It makes me think you are abusing your playerbase with these prices. No wonder [redacted] exploits are rampant, at the "other forum". Nobody can afford even basic QOL stuff from the DDO store. I'm actually sorry for the VIPs. I've NEVER subscribed, but I know how much VIPs have been used and abused. I can't believe they have stayed this long. A sizeable amount of the playerbase is clearly codependent. But, can't leave their abuser. DDO prices are abuse.

I mean I just don't think that's true*.

I do think that, like LARP, it's expensive enough that it's mostly suited for middle earners, which makes folk who want to spend their disposable on more than one thing feel like there's a huge barrier to entry.

But you know, SSG could be a worse corporation. *sideeyes at WOTC*.

*(I mean, I think the codependency suggestion is true, but that's how it is with any game- video games are addictive and that's been the entire point of making them since about 2001, so why would anyone be surprised if players become co-dependent if they play something for a long time? Might as well be surprised that the stuff that falls out of the sky tastes like that stuff you find in streams. For my part, it just helps kill another few hours of my life between work and bed as a healthier alternative to drinking whilst I wait for the old biochemistry to stop. At least DDO quests are legitimately laugh out loud funny from time to time. I suspect DDO is just where middle aged & older gamers come to put down roots really - after all the excitement hope and fight is beaten out of you, you conclude "well I might as well be comfortable". And of course, all of this supposition is as much speculation and projection as your view that the prices are abuse, we can, neither of us, make an evidence based case for it other than 'well *I* feel that way').

[Anurakh]

The information is too minimalist, each point would have needed to be explained a little with news, etc.

What's that raid update, Cordovan? What are you going to change in the raids?

Isn't there going to be more work on the storage problem? The crafting bank needs larger and more standardized stack sizes and filters. The regular storage still needs improvements, the minimal space increase you gave us last time (at an exorbitant price) doesn't solve anything, and it came with a more cumbersome interface to use. I wouldn't have cared about the interface if the extra space had been plentiful, but so...

No wonder they have nothing to say about VIP. When they said last year that there would be improvements, it seemed to me that it was a simple way of placating people without a real will to do anything. And so it has been, so they have met with the wrath of the people, who did believe them, by surprise. I really don't understand how SSG can't see how much mini-expansion and annual expansions have devalued their subscription, not to mention the proliferation of iconic ones. If they want the content to not be a fundamental part of the VIP membership, then they have to increase the other perks, it's obvious to anyone who thinks about it for a moment.

I am not a fan of mini-xpacs. To me, mini-xpacks are the old packs that you used to make, absurdly overpriced and not available in the store until six months after they were released. I don't like your new sales policy at all.

And every year you put out more and more past lives, and you do nothing to help alts and new players. Absurd.

[Gordo]

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.

If you don't want to use the reaper points, just don't use them. Nobody is forcing you. There - you nerfed yourself.
You're welcome.

[xaxaeb]

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.

It baffles me to this day why we need better gear..... We want challenge, we should just run from 1 to 32 R10 naked..... Gear just makes the said content easier
Now that I think about it.... why even get levels? Can we just run legendary raids as lvl 1 toons, pls?

How many reaper points do you have? Do you even play r10?
The only thing reaper points do is MAYBE, in some situations let you survive 1 hit. I mean when mobs hit you for 3k, does it matter if you bring a 1.5k hp toon or 2.5k hp toon into the quest? Fatter melees will go from like 3k to 4k hp (obviously tanks will do better) and survive 1 hit, so that healers can at least try to heal. HP/damage scaling past a certain point doesn't make the content any more difficult.... challenging mechanics in a quest do. What does it matter if I'm dead with -1k hp, -2k hp or -20k hp? I was dead in 1 hit anyway.

[Belnavar]

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.

I, and many others I know, love the reaper trees and the benefits we get from there (in and outside of Reaper mode). Instead of nuking that, or rebalancing the ten existing Reaper levels, why not simply add another 5, much harder, ranks? And then, when we get Legendary Reincarnation and all the power creep from there, add another 5 even harder ranks. That way you don't take anything away from those enjoying the existing progression, but give more challenge to those much further along. Best of both worlds.

-Bel

[Belnavar]

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….

I agree (except we can almost certainly predict a full expansion next year, as that alternating pattern seems well-established for both games now -- and I don't personally have an issue with it).

The Producer's Letter is probably the biggest opportunity to create excitement and enthusiasm for the game, and as much as I liked what Tolero delivered last year, and appreciate the roadmap (however skeletal), this letter hugely underperformed on that front.

I get that there may be some hesitancy to share about all upcoming plans, especially ones that are less concrete or might get canned or postponed, but we learned a tonne more from Severlin on the stream (which mostly made up for how lacking the letter is for me), bit that info should really have been in the letter. Just emphasise that some things may not make it (the roadmap already has a disclaimer) and most players will be understanding. Saying as little as possible isn't a good way forward though, and I think that was learned quite strongly on the LOTRO side.

-Bel

[Captain_Wizbang]

, this letter hugely underperformed on that front.

Laughable is a better term