DDO health ?

[Diracorvus]

This game is a very small niche MMO that mostly exists because there are some dedicated fans that are still playing despite it's age and low population. Let's just be happy that something like that still has a chance to survive on the market and a company exists that cares about running it at all.

[Oxarhamar]

could start by locking the lfm to 1 quest at a time for anyone in the lfm.
got groups running different quests
seems once a player is in a quest no-one should be able to open another one.

This sounds like it would create more problems for grouping than it would solve

[Strider1963]

Its not like this game hasn't generated multi millions over the years, they have it, they just don't want to spend it because we as players keep paying and coming back. So unless that changes drastically , no new changes like that will ever be done.

Great game, great ideas, poor execution at times. it happens when companies get big and no longer need to make those adjustments to keep income rolling in.

I really dont think the devs have anywhere near enough bucks to do a ddo 2.0 (of course I could be wrong). I have read that the average cost to develop an new MMO today is right around 30 mil. so lots of luck there.

[Gordo]

I really dont think the devs have anywhere near enough bucks to do a ddo 2.0 (of course I could be wrong). I have read that the average cost to develop an new MMO today is right around 30 mil. so lots of luck there.

Or just a few more "For a very select time, otto boxes are back on sale!" may get us over the hump!

[Onyxia2019]

This simple fact is, that building DDO 2.0 would take years and cost millions.
It takes far fewer employees to maintain a game like this than to rebuild it on a new platform.

If Strimtom's estimate of DDO having 15 employees with one graphic artist shared between DDO and LoTR is to be believed, they would need to expand that to at least 50 to have any hope of getting something done in a couple of years and still maintain the current version of the game.

Use $50k to $60K for the salary which is low for a programmer, I am a programmer and I make more than that but for the sake of arguing we will use these lower values.
This works out to 2.5 million to 3 million a year in salaries. This does not count all to other expenses that an employer pays for each employee here in the US.
There is also the equipment the staff will need, workstation, software licensing, servers as well as the work space.

SSG could contract out the work but that comes with its own set of challenges and security concerns.

Needless to say this would be a huge amount of capital spent with an uncertain return on the investment.

Lets say it's been 2 years and DDO 2.0 is ready to be released. We can assume at least 10 million has been invested so far. I am sure that is low.

It is hard to say what the average player spends in a year so we will go with $1000 for xpacks and in-game items (ie buy points)

At this rate is would take 10,000 players spending $1000 a year to cover the development cost, this does not count maintenance and development cost after the initial release.

Since the DDO audit site list a max players online across all servers at around 2,000 players vs the unique characters which exaggerates the player base, that mean it would take those players 5 years to break even on the development cost alone.

New game on new platform may bring in a lot of new players but there is know way to predict that. Even if we double the player base to 4000 all spending $1000 a year we are looking at 2.5 years to break even on development.

Obviously these figures are ballpark, well maybe not even ballpark, more like the parking lot at the ballpark but it does kind of put things into perspective.

I personally would love to see DDO 2.0 come to fruition, but I am also a realist and understand why it would be a long shot at best

[archest]

This sounds like it would create more problems for grouping than it would solve

why would anyone use this ? the only problem would be if you had a group and someone stayed behind in the last quest. you couldn't open the next and or would have to remove the player from the group that was not out of the other quest or wait for them to exit the other quest.
would have to add a feature to remove player to the leader of the lfm.
or rebuild the lfm.
yes it would delay the zerg fest and anger them to no end that they had someone delay there zerg fest.
there is no reason to run 2 quests in the same group at the same time.
there is background com to each player within the lfm during the quest.< this is the issue which could be causing some delay in data being delivered to all the players hence LAG.

[magaiti]

there is no reason to run 2 quests in the same group at the same time.

cough, different difficulty settings, cough

[Oxarhamar]

why would anyone use this ? the only problem would be if you had a group and someone stayed behind in the last quest. you couldn't open the next and or would have to remove the player from the group that was not out of the other quest or wait for them to exit the other quest.
would have to add a feature to remove player to the leader of the lfm.
or rebuild the lfm.
yes it would delay the zerg fest and anger them to no end that they had someone delay there zerg fest.
there is no reason to run 2 quests in the same group at the same time.
there is background com to each player within the lfm during the quest.< this is the issue which could be causing some delay in data being delivered to all the players hence LAG.

Indeed there are legitimate reasons to run 2 quests at the same time with one group & putting in the limitation that groups can only be in one quest would literally make some quests unplayable

You want to solve a “could be” problem by making grouping even more limited than it is now



At least you have acknowledged one potential problem with your idea though your solution for that is not going to happen they aren’t going to add kicking a player from group in quest it’s too easy for grief also dropping group & reformation anytime that another player doesn’t recall out fast enough is extremely clunky

There’s other issues that you haven’t addressed

You don’t like to Zerg & play fast don’t do it but coming up with solutions that stifle others group play is not going to help this already limited grouping game

[Logicman69]

This simple fact is, that building DDO 2.0 would take years and cost millions.
It takes far fewer employees to maintain a game like this than to rebuild it on a new platform.

If Strimtom's estimate of DDO having 15 employees with one graphic artist shared between DDO and LoTR is to be believed, they would need to expand that to at least 50 to have any hope of getting something done in a couple of years and still maintain the current version of the game.

Use $50k to $60K for the salary which is low for a programmer, I am a programmer and I make more than that but for the sake of arguing we will use these lower values.
This works out to 2.5 million to 3 million a year in salaries. This does not count all to other expenses that an employer pays for each employee here in the US.
There is also the equipment the staff will need, workstation, software licensing, servers as well as the work space.

SSG could contract out the work but that comes with its own set of challenges and security concerns.

Needless to say this would be a huge amount of capital spent with an uncertain return on the investment.

Lets say it's been 2 years and DDO 2.0 is ready to be released. We can assume at least 10 million has been invested so far. I am sure that is low.

It is hard to say what the average player spends in a year so we will go with $1000 for xpacks and in-game items (ie buy points)

At this rate is would take 10,000 players spending $1000 a year to cover the development cost, this does not count maintenance and development cost after the initial release.

Since the DDO audit site list a max players online across all servers at around 2,000 players vs the unique characters which exaggerates the player base, that mean it would take those players 5 years to break even on the development cost alone.

New game on new platform may bring in a lot of new players but there is know way to predict that. Even if we double the player base to 4000 all spending $1000 a year we are looking at 2.5 years to break even on development.

Obviously these figures are ballpark, well maybe not even ballpark, more like the parking lot at the ballpark but it does kind of put things into perspective.

I personally would love to see DDO 2.0 come to fruition, but I am also a realist and understand why it would be a long shot at best

I think that would be the wrong way of looking at it. The idea behind DDO2 would not be to keep the existing player base, but grow it exponentially. We would also have to see a fundamental shift in how the game is priced/marketed. DDO2 would not be just a graphic update, but a complete overhaul of the game, bringing it into a modern age to compete with something like Elden Ring.

Lets assume that DDO2 comes to pass, and it is on par with the current selection of fantasy games. Elden Ring had 17.5 MILLION units sold world wide. Let's cut that down a bit (lets say a little more than half) to 9 million for DDO2 (movie franchise tie in coupled with agressive marketing). That is 9 MILLION players. Lets say the basic game would include all current expansions, and further expansions are released 2x a year as DLC. The initial game would be similarly priced to current game prices ($60 US). 9 Million players x $60 = $540 Million Dollars. DLC would be priced at $30 per.. Lets say half the players buy the DLC each time. Thats 4.5 Million people buying the DLC per release = $135 Million 2x a year. Add in more microtransactions and the return is significant.

Again.. this is assuming that the game is A) on par with current titles in terms of graphics/story/playability B) cross platform (PC/PS5/XBox/Switch) C) markets their product correctly.

And this is all assuming that this is half as popular as Elden Ring. Even is we cut DDO2's numbers down to a quarter of what Elden Ring did, it would still be a significant revenue stream. The downside is that it would be a MUCH higher cost than simply $10 million. Since I used Elden Ring as an example, that cost $200 Million to make.

[archest]

Indeed there are legitimate reasons to run 2 quests at the same time with one group & putting in the limitation that groups can only be in one quest would literally make some quests unplayable

You want to solve a “could be” problem by making grouping even more limited than it is now



At least you have acknowledged one potential problem with your idea though your solution for that is not going to happen they aren’t going to add kicking a player from group in quest it’s too easy for grief also dropping group & reformation anytime that another player doesn’t recall out fast enough is extremely clunky

There’s other issues that you haven’t addressed

You don’t like to Zerg & play fast don’t do it but coming up with solutions that stifle others group play is not going to help this already limited grouping game

there is not reason then one guy wants to run LOD and the other wants to head to ES and run druids and both are running them at the same time within the same lfm....... if you can say why this is good and a valid thing that benefits you let me know?