Eladiun wrote on Sep 14^th, 2012 at 10:10am:

Eh. I disagree.

I've played a Ranger 18/rogue 1/fighter 1 that was all right (archer, so...you know). He's now a 12 monk/6 ranger/2 artificer, has respectable ranged DPS, ranged CC, self-healing via scrolls, other UMD-ables, and trap skills.

I have a paladin that has been a 14 paladin/6 fighter, a 20 fighter, an 18 paladin/2 fighter, is now a 20 paladin, and may end up as an 18/2 again down the road. I have a pure wizard, and an 18 wizard/2 rogue that focused on Ghoste's stealthy wizard schtick that I was enjoying for a while, and I've enjoyed following along with the Zombie wizard thread over on the DDO forums. I have an 18 barbarian/2 fighter that I like, had a rogue with a /1 fighter splash that I enjoyed until the capstone came out, and have tried a few different combinations of classes on my monk.

All of the above involved a deal of careful consideration and planning, which I enjoy, and largely turned out pretty well. Epic destinies overlaid add even more to the mix, as one character can feel quite different moving from one destiny to the next. Honestly, this is one of my favorite aspects of DDO, and of D&D (and of Magic the Gathering): I like building characters (and decks) and am often pushing pieces around in my head as I make my way through the day. Some people may fail horribly at character building, or may be overwhelmed by it, and many cleave to a less complex path by single-classing and using prescribed paths (and I admit that I do as well to some degree on some characters), but there is certainly a TON of room for creativity and variety. The build forums are constantly abuzz with new ideas and combinations. Some work very well, some are designed for only a certain niche of player, and some fail, but that's enjoyable, both to experience and to read.

Do you have to PvP to get good gear? I'm terribad at PvP and don't enjoy it at all.

Cale wrote on Sep 13^th, 2012 at 10:23pm:


Ok, I am sold. Downloading now. 

You are doing a decent sales pitch here. Hubby is on the way back from Canada so I could set it gurning while he makes me do improving stuff. Hmmmmm. How many bazillion gigs is it?

I must be brain damaged or something, not really enjoying after the OMGSHINY! wore off. It just feels sluggish to me, PvP is of little interest (bug part of the game I know) and while combat an driving the character is about as close to DDO as any game, it still annoys me.

I guess I like the instance based quests more than an open world where "quests" are collecting tools or other random inane chores.

Maybe I just hate leveling new characters, or I just don't like the usual MMO style. Bit of both I think.

Felgor wrote on Sep 15^th, 2012 at 8:23am:


Well, no game can be for everyone, Fel.
As to the questing, the lower level areas have quite a few random inane quests thrown in, but as you level these get less and less until they literally don't exist anymore at higher levels.
The higher you get, the more important and [and more frequent, and more massive] dynamic events become.
There are areas at higher levels that literally have zero Hearts in them.  They are instead a massive map full of spiderweb branching dynamic events.  So that annoyance disappears.  If you tried WvW at all, imagine that, but in PvE versus the mobs rather than PvP versus the other servers.
And really, are those quests so much different from trying to find Venn in a random cell of the dungeon?  Not so much in my eyes.

Cale wrote on Sep 15^th, 2012 at 12:07am:


Played a few hours with trols, got up to level 25 and I have to say guild wars is amazing in a lot of ways.  The actual combat is alot better and funner than DDO.  The graphics are just way better despite being only DX9.  Boss fights are just so much smoother due to the fact that it's multi-threaded properly.  I could go on. 

But there's quite a few things that are not good about GW, and customization is one of them.  Half your skills are tied to your weapon set and you only have ~10-ish skills and two weapon sets.  So you aren't really getting thousands of combinations, you're getting 5c2 = 10 different builds per profession, generally without much variation.  And half those weapon sets are crap, anyway (e.g., thief pistol/pistol). 

Another big problem is the massive botting problem.  They really just made it way too easy to bot, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was on purpose so they can ban people and get them to buy more copies.  Like GW1, GW2 is going to be a botters game.

Grace wrote on Sep 15^th, 2012 at 10:57am:


...You do play DDO right?

JC wrote on Sep 15^th, 2012 at 11:05am:


I usually have 10-20 weapons on me at all times, depending on the toon. Less for my monk, more for my TWF rogue. I swap them out situationally for different dungeons or large groups. I rarely use more than two weapons or sets for any quest. I would venture to say that's the norm in DDO. I will set my own hair on fire before I play something where I have to swap out every time I want to cast a different kind of spell or use a different skill. I tolerate that shit - barely - in early levels in DDO, but by the time I hit 15-16 my gear is integrated enough that if I walk into a quest and don't change anything, I'm still fine 90% of the time.

tl;dr Gear swapping sucks.

AtomicMew wrote on Sep 15^th, 2012 at 10:24am:


I'm not talking about weapon skills as the "build."  I'm talking about Traits here, coupled with weapon skills and secondary skills.
Having 70 Trait points to spread however you want within five disciplines, and each of those disciplines having up to three minor traits and up to three major traits [from twelve to choose from within each line] depending on how many points you spend per tier, allows for massive customization.
Look again at those links and see that each one uses different weapons sets, making for completely different skills.  Each of them has different utility and elite skills, making for completely different secondary skills.  Each of them has different traits, making for different build types and play styles.
Those three builds have absolutely nothing in common during play other than the fact that they all have Guardian icons.  And that was just ten minutes in the planner total.  With some time spent on it, that number gets ridiculously large.  And that's just Guardian.  Every single profession is exactly the same way in this.
Customization is huge in this game.  It just happens slowly and incrementally over the course of leveling rather than at character creation.  At level one every Guardian will be the same.  At level 80 there are literally thousands of possible Guardian builds.

I'm thinking the most effective possible trolling of Cale would be to post about not liking GW2. Where's Azog when you need him?

What it might be for some people is the odd transitioning from the DND character building to this weird GW2 char building. As of now I have no idea what to put trait points into, what abilities to get, what gear to aim for, etc. I'm sure in a couple months I and everyone else will have figured it out.