tl;dr - Turbine has lost their course over the past year, needs to revisit their roots.

For me, there are two types of unpredictability in the game. One is underused by the devs - random trap locations, different monster spawn locations and types, and different mazes (okay, I dislike the latter in Prey - I hate that maze). This type of unpredicatability is generally fun for a while, since repeating quests can get boring.

The other is the ability to make stealth changes to the game, which is becoming overused. A week or two ago, named items were dropping like candy in the Orchard, but by Monday (presumably when the decision was made to not use rare drops in crafting), it seems that rates returned to the normal, abysmally low levels. That is one example - drop rates of crafting essences are another place where sometimes we get them, sometimes we don't, and the drop rates vary on a daily basis. Then there are things like the stealth Abbott difficulty changes. Given that raids are mostly run by level 20s, making elite much harder isn't a bad thing, but stealth changes suck.

It is almost like a two-year old is playing with the sliders on the drop rates and difficulty in this game. Okay, so Turbine is probably losing their best people to 38 Studios, but for an MMO company, they don't really seem to be able to understand people. Do they have a good economist on staff, and a psycologist on retainer? If so, are those people any good, and are they even listening to them?

I've only taken introductory economics and psych, but I don't think that Turbine understands their playerbase, or how changes to rewards, and outcomes affect player's enjoyment and motivations. Even worse, they seem to lack any ability to predict the impact of gameplay changes on the playerbase, or the reaction to same. If Mournlands is as full of sycophantic ass-kissers as reported, then it isn't surprising - sycophants make a poor focus group (btw, Strakeln and Stainer, the Vault is awesome. Nice work. But the new user-moderation area is lame).

I wasn't around before F2P, but it sounds like the F2P beta was open, extended in duration, got a lot of feedback, and (mostly) adhered to some basic principles that are widely supported by the playerbase: no pay2win, no grind (ha ha), no crippling of F2P, etc. Shortly after the launch, Turbine even got rid of some annoyances that affected the F2P crowd - anyone remember leveling sigils? The focus was on attracting and retaining players. The game is solid, the gameplay is great, and the F2P model worked. Fyi, this is my first MMO - I tried LoTRO when it went F2P, what a fail compared to DDO gameplay. If WoW is anything like that, how can so many people play it?

So what has happened over the past year or so? I'm still waiting to see new content that matches the Vale of Twilight, or the Sands, or even STK. Turbine has made tons of money on DDO, but where is it going? I'm not seeing that cash flowing back to the game. What happened to the people who worked to make F2P a success? Why are they treating players like guinea pigs rather than like customers? Why are we seeing more and more pay2win, with the endless stream of new collectables and ingredients (buy more bags), and crafting that cannot be overwritten (buy more character bank slots).

I don't follow what is happening at LoTRO, but I recall that one of the first things Kate Paiz did on moving from DDO to LoTRO a year ago was roll back an unpopular system, and apologize for it. The DDO team seems to be missing an element of accountability. I'm not seeing a real connection between the team and their product. Instead of seeming like the biggest fans of the game, the devs and mods are at war with the playerbase.

Lately, we've seen a bunch of ad-hoc changes that are quick and dirty hacks, conceived and coded over a weekend. Look at the new ingredients added to crafting - did DDO need yet another type of dragonshard? Or a new BtC or BtA favor-based ingredient? Why should all high-level crafting be tied to the purchase of Amrath and the four Necro packs? Does that make sense, and does it fit with the principles which Turbine held as the core  of their F2P approach?

People who cannot even remotely predict the consequences of their actions do not belong in a position of power. People who constantly screw up, overcorrect, and then have to fix it also should not be making decisions. People who do not understand what motivates users, what makes a game fun, and what builds a community have no business working in an MMO. The DDO team is broken.

Seems to me, reading between the lines, and seeing the results, the biggest disconnect is between systems and content.

Yeah, it takes longer to adapt both to a system, since coding typically does take a weekend of implementation after a month of study, if you're one of those screwball neanderthals that believes in stomping side effects flat beforehand instead of padding your paycheck with fix after fix.

More and more though it seems like adapting actual, interact-able, run content to updated systems is 'someone else's job'.