Producer's Letter

[jaggyjag]

No really, what did you mean by a few improvements to Rogue? I just double-checked the 2014 updates and all I could find was:
-a buff to Shadow Dagger (still garbage at epic level, the only place where you actually get Melee Power)
-a buff to Envenomed Blades (so like +9 damage at best, that's not affected by crits)
-a buff to the Mechanic capstone (which obviously means taking 40 AP in Mechanic tree, LOL no thanks)
-a buff to Acrobat capstone (no good Staff build takes 20 Rogue)
-and doubling the duration of Cartwheel Charge AKA the most atrociously awful lvl18 core ability of any class, next to, uh, Mechanic's +1 to Great Crossbow crit range

Unless I'm mistaken, this is all there is, Harper tree was a much larger buff to Rogues (Assassin, specifically) than any of these changes, though it did make one of the better features of Mechanic (INT to damage on crossbows) far less valuable, so, LOL.

Can we have some info on how further the class improvements are going to go? We already know FvS is getting a third tree, but you didn't mention this. FvS, Artificer and Rogue all lag behind pretty badly, especially Artificer and any Rogue that's not a stick build. The entire Kensai tree is below or at least roughly comparable to the output of Holy Sword (iirc.) Henshin mystic is pretty freaking bad. You gave the uber treatment to Bards and Paladins, greatly improved Barbarian and are going to make further improvements to them; are any other classes going to get this treatment?

You are correct, their was no real work done on Rogues or rangers in the past year, you have covered the rogue I will point out the changes to Ranger were only two cool downs in tempest, and a couple of bug fixes to put abilities where they were listed at already.

For Sev to say "work" was done on either is disingenuous at best.

Now for the "bad" news, I would hazard that by saying work had been "done" on those classes that Turbine will attempt to use that as cover when they avoid moving forward with the review of the two classes at pains to avoid the cost in many man hours and resources it would cost to do so (the forum wont police itself for complaints you know!).

[The_Human_Cypher]

Something to note about Update 25 which is only a few months away: The Temple of Elemental Evil will be an opportunity for DDO to do some serious promotion for this game. The buzz is already growing around TOEE / Greyhawk. People who have barely played DDO or haven't even noticed the game before are excited about this update.

Read the comments on this article from Massively about Sev's Producer's Letter

http://massively.joystiq.com/2015/01...-bump-in-2015/

The gamer community is getting interested about what is coming to DDO and Turbine needs to capitalize on this publicity.

[Qezuzu]

You are correct, their was no real work done on Rogues or rangers in the past year, you have covered the rogue I will point out the changes to Ranger were only two cool downs in tempest, and a couple of bug fixes to put abilities where they were listed at already.

For Sev to say "work" was done on either is disingenuous at best.

Now for the "bad" news, I would hazard that by saying work had been "done" on those classes that Turbine will attempt to use that as cover when they avoid moving forward with the review of the two classes at pains to avoid the cost in many man hours and resources it would cost to do so (the forum wont police itself for complaints you know!).

Dance of Death went from useless to really one of the best T5 abilities of any class. But yeah, they only changed the cooldowns, not a lot of work as actually done there, I wouldn't have even bothered mentioning it in the letter.

[Mindos]

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/441880

[esojiul]

I like all your proposal. If you add:

1) gnome
2) 1 more class
3) more spells
4) Air and Earth form from Druid
5) update artificer


will be great

[Dragonlover333]

A festival of mimics. I love it. Please make it as hilarious as it sounds.

[Waaye]

The game will introduce a new story arc that will take the players to Shavarath for a new adventure pack. Characters on these adventures will work to prevent a catastrophe. That story will continue as the year progresses to bring the players once again to the Vale of Twilight. New threats have entered the Vale and more powerful challenges await in this chapter of the Vale of Twilight’s history. Defeating this new threat will require you to enter the more dangerous and powerful Vale of Twilight as you increase your level to 30 and obtain new treasures. More powerful items also await from the corrupted Greensteel found in the Vale after recent events have increased the magical power of the area.

Greetings to you too, Severlin. Will it be possible to adventure in the new content without murdering an entire village of good Elves as required for the Vale of Twilight story arc? Since my lawful good Elf Ranger adheres to his alignment he had to abandon the VoT story line completely at Running With the Devils. Any new content with a murder or other serious crime as a prerequisite will also be unavailable to him.

[Baal222]

Warlock
We are looking into adding a new class during the year, and we are considering the Warlock class. The Warlock creates powerful eldritch blasts to destroy enemies in addition to a variety of spells to aid them in their adventures.

Please make augment summon useful... please make augment summon useful....

This past year has seen changes that have allowed for powerful new builds. Heavy armor is no longer relegated to niche builds and has instead taken its place on the front line of the fight. The year saw large improvements for Bard, Paladin and Barbarian, as well as a few improvements for Ranger and Rogue. We added a new Bard tree with Swashbuckler, and the new Vanguard tree is now available to Fighter and Paladin. We also added the Harper Agent enhancement tree. This year also saw changes to help some heroic abilities scale into Epic levels, and a rebalance of the melee oriented Epic Enhancement trees.

Can we PLEASE revamp epic destinies? So much grinding. So little reward.

As excited as we are about the additions to the game, the true joy of working on our game has been the involvement of the community. The feedback on features and additions has been extremely helpful. Our players are a passionate bunch who clearly love the game as much as we do, and we love reading feedback, hearing what you love about the game, watching your videos, answering questions during live casts, and hearing stories about your in game adventures.

Slay the lag monster. Seriously. This needs to be done.

New Festivals
The coming year will bring new festivals; a mimic event where players have to hunt down mimics that have infested all the corners of the land. The autumn will also bring a new seasonal festival that will haunt your favorite places and provide characters with more treats than tricks.

I'm really hoping after all these years Mabar will work properly. Again, the lag monster is terrible. Please fix it.

[Ayseifn]

Seems even leaner on content than last year, recycling two packs and one new quest is it for 3 updates?

Hopefully more work is put into Vale and Shavarath than was done for Necropolis, please don't skip VoD, HoX, The Weapons Shipment or Wrath of the Flame like you did with shield/tome of legends and the Litany of the Dead quest for the Necro 4 update. More of the epic GH treatment please where everything got updated and there was a ton of loot to keep people coming back.

As for the raids other than Shroud they're all still very good at level it's just that power creep ruined them. They shouldn't need to be dumbed down like Mark of Death was, although with how easy self healing is and how no fail saves are also a thing now some changes would be appreciated.

What happened to the FR desert raid, guessing winter release?

Warlocks were meh in NWN2, if they're anything like they were in that they'll just be the new and best Shiradi spammers. Would have preferred some new races and Iconics, setting the stage for a possible Iconic completionist but I get that classes are easier and that no one really has the AP for racial trees anymore with all this class power creep.

Not intending to sound harsh, You've done a pretty great job so far with limited resources it's just that those limited resources are showing and I miss the days of big expansions coinciding with level cap increases.

As for the level cap increase please engage early with the players on this. It'd be very easy to get it wrong and either waste a lot of development time or release something that's just bad. Since this is probably the last level increase and then we're off to maintenance mode you really need to get it right. End game has been off the rails since MotU, it was almost there again with epic GH but then we got Shadowfell which was way too soon and anaemic. It'll take something magical to make a level 30 cap viable when right now 28 still isn't so please take the time to get it right.

[Oxarhamar]

I'm really hoping after all these years Mabar will work properly. Again, the lag monster is terrible. Please fix it.

Mabar is dead

[Aelonwy]

The new Warlock class should be introduced with the Shavarath update as they tie in nicely with each other. This might also be the time to introduce the Tiefling race as well (hint, hint). It will be a devilish update indeed.

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Pla...ngs_%28Race%29

Tiefling and Aasimar, they could sell them as the Planar Races package, after all if they do it right we should be visiting the Archon stronghold/city.

[Severlin]

I just wanted to jump in an answer some questions:




“Are any bug fixes in the works?”


We plan to do regular bug passes with each update. Right now our engineering is devoted to fixing lag issues.




“Is this the Sentinent weapon that was talked about?”


Here is the honest reason I didn’t mention Sentient Weapons. Our plan is to include them in the new Greensteel, because we don’t want to release a system and have Greensteel overshadow it, and we also don’t want to release Greensteel and have Sentient Weapons make those obsolete. So far we have been unhappy with our designs to include Sentient Weapons with Greensteel because, as most players know Greensteel was an awesome system. Because that design is still very much in the air I didn’t want to include Sentient Weapons in the producer’s letter.


“Epic vale quests again...”


Our current plan is to redo the Vale quests, and keep the raid mechanics mostly intact with a new encounter at the end. Some of the Vale quests really need to be revamped.


“ugh... mimic acid damage galore...”


The mimics that are part of the hunt are not the fully mature hard hitting mimics you are probably thinking of.




“What about adding better networking hardware? Better servers to handel the players?”


We are currently discussing options to move the datacenter and update the hardware, but I have no firm plans to announce at this time.




“Can someone please be assigned to adding new relevant recipes to Cannith Crafting?”


We’d love to revamp Cannith crafting and have it extend into some of the higher levels, and have discussed doing so. Our schedule is fairly aggressive and if something needs to be cut the revamp is a likely candidate. For that reason I didn’t add it to the producer’s letter. It is on our list of things to do however.


“Lag grew to an unacceptable level in 2014 and has majorly affected the ability of players to enjoy the game.”


Last year we took steps to combat lag. We changed the shared bank to a paged system for example.


We are currently looking at a specific case of lag caused by stacking server instances. We are working on a fix. I have no date to announce but we want to deploy a fix soon.


There is also another type of lag players are seeing – the lag spike. The lag spike isn’t lag as you imagine it. It is often a server process encountering a content bug and trying to restart out from under players. The server tries to save the instance by moving the instance and all the players to another server process. When this happens all the players see a longish lag spike as their characters are shuffled from process to process. Some characters fail to move and get DC’d. We are actively pursuing the most frequent cause of these process issues and hope to close off at least some of those in the next patch. This work will continue until we have nailed down any frequent crashes.


After that lag will be an ongoing development process. As an example, we plan to look at possible lag caused be crafting formulas in the patches that follow this one.


"Exploits have completely destroyed the in game shard economy, anniversary event and crippled the end game raiding scene.”


We have already added server side protections in the last patch to close exploit holes. We will continue to do so throughout the year.


“When do we start talking about the other stuff in U25”


We have other balance plans as we progress through the year. We still need a ranged pass. We are looking to see if barbarians need further tweaks. We know there are classes that need a third tree. We have other plans for some trees that underperform. Those ongoing design notes are out of scope for a producer’s letter.


“Epic Shavarath”


To clarify, we expect the Shavarath adventure pack to be all new content.


“Warlock Class? Wait isn't that basically Pale Master?”


We envision the Warlock class concentrating mostly on its Eldritch Blast ability and ways to manipulate that arcane blast in various ways. While the Warlock does have spell abilities they are closer to a ranged character than a traditional caster.


“This might also be the time to introduce the Tiefling race as well (hint, hint).”


Modifying all the helmets in the game for horns *and* modifying all the animations to add a tail turns out to be really, really costly in time and art.


“I am however concerned by yet another added collectable/ or ingredient.”


They stack really high so you should only need one slot. We wanted to do some kind of currency panel or wallet, but we don’t have the implementation time at the moment.


“Is the mimic event still going to contain the Mabar items, or will they be moved to the autumn event?”


The mimic hunt is actually one of the fun things we have planned for our anniversary. I believe the Mabar items are still planned as rewards for the mimic hunt. We want to have an entirely new festival around the Halloween time, and that would also include appropriately themed items.




Sev~

[Aelonwy]

“This might also be the time to introduce the Tiefling race as well (hint, hint).”


Modifying all the helmets in the game for horns *and* modifying all the animations to add a tail turns out to be really, really costly in time and art.

Uhmm, I don't think any of the Tiefling NPCs or mobs have tails so skip the tails, we don't need them. We do need horns and glowing red eyes.

Now I understand modifying the helmets could be a bit of an issue but not insurmountable.

Aasimar by the way should have some unique pale skin colors, alot of unusual hair colors, and possibly some unusual eye colors. Otherwise they should look more or less human with slightly pointy ears.

Please do not turn them into half-elves it hurts me that I can make a more attractive half-orc female than a half-elf.

[Theopolis]

Like get a clue .....people stay in the same circles, so more content means less people to pug with. You ruined healers, rogues and pure classes, now you want to make another class so people aren't completionist and have to work that again.....you certainly know how to hold that carrot in front of them. As for new players, forget it. They will be totally lost unless someone holds their hand. Character building is complicated, for all you nay Sayers I don't play 24/7 and read all the forums constantly. I for one enjoy the game but it is burdensome to my guild mates to constantly answer my questions and lay siege to the dungeons while I cower in the back just trying to stay alive, since they want to do everything on epic elite. lets not forget the added bugs every time you do an update. Also I have played this game for 5 years, took a year off, started playing again a few months ago. I used to be able to solo quite a few levels on my own, now you throw in champions cause the 24/7 people say the game is to easy, I for one don't want champions. Champions have more hit points and that's you answer to making it more challenging. Tired of being funneled into your monsters....reminds me of killer Dungeon masters that didn't want to see the party trample on everything in their path, cause its not fun. I will never be a completionist at any level since I don't play 24/7, I am ok with this, but when it becomes frustrating to play cause your toon isn't built just so......the carrot has no appeal, and people will fade away. One other gripe, It is amazing to see how fast you fix a bug that benefits the people playing, yet still cant fix bugs that have been around for a few updates.

[Vellrad]

The thought of epic coal chamber does fill me with dread, yeah. The walls of the shafts will probably have lightning auras and spikes...

They will be made of ooze and gelantous cubes.

[Qezuzu]

Thanks for addressing basically everything brought up so far. It was honestly unexpected.

... now you want to make another class so people aren't completionist and have to work that again.....you certainly know how to hold that carrot in front of them.

Yeah we can't have more classes of course, completionists will lose their feat that explicitly says it goes away when a new class is released.

[HatsuharuZ]

They will be made of ooze and gelantous cubes.

That would be the best-case scenario. If they were made of g cubes and oozes, then we could just sit at the bottom and destroy them one by one! :P

[Karadon_II]

Congrats on the promotion Sev.

Your back-patting for the changes from 2014 is mostly justified, well done to you and the team.

I was personally delighted for the changes to Paladin and that was my highlight for 2014 hands down. [I wouldn't have mentioned improvements to Rogues and Rangers, they were so minimal they aren't really worth mentioning now to be honest and amongst the other achievements they're just unnecessary padding].

If the Temple of Elemental Evil is as good as Haunted Halls then it sounds great but is the Anauroch Desert shelved this year too? If the new Shavarath adventure is just an epic-ified "Devils of Shavarath" pack or a completely new set of "hand crafted adventures" than you need to clarifiy this as soon as possible. Epic Vale wasn't a secret but I hope Epic Greensteel will be treated in such a way that does not invalidate Thunderforged weapons and is implemented in a way that prevents the rampant duping that is degrading the game's economy.

I'm uninspired with the ideas for Monster Champions, but if there is something of actual use [i.e. not pets] to get with Mysterious Fragments then I may change my mind. Warlocks don't interest me, I would have preferred a new Melee class as opposed to a spellcaster as the last three classes added to the game have primarily been casters and you've just implemented Melee power, but I'm happy for those who wanted Warlocks. It's time for a new race too, Gnomes and Tieflings are popular demands, my own want is Aasimar but I'd be happy with one as an Iconic.

If the new events don't create soul-crushing lag as in Crystal Cove and old Mabar then I'm sure they'll be well received.

Enjoy these last few months before your inevitable move to LOTRO, and don't go all quiet on us from now on.

[The_Human_Cypher]

If the new Shavarath adventure is just an epic-ified "Devils of Shavarath" pack or a completely new set of "hand crafted adventures" than you need to clarifiy this as soon as possible.

Sev states above in his follow up comments that Shavarath will be entirely new.

[Karadon_II]

Sev states above in his follow up comments that Shavarath will be entirely new.

Yeah, yeah, he ninjaed me - I'm getting old and slow and it's 3AM

A lot of my concerns addressed. Time for bed.