majmalphunktion wrote on Jun 13^th, 2013 at 11:44am:


Sorry, I thought about it for a couple of days and it still doesn't make any sense.

My four year old plays...runs around the public places - even joins groups once in awhile but doesn't voice chat.  He even notices when you nerf things, "Daddy, why did they change xxxx? That is mean."

I play the older content because I like it and he likes to watch.  I don't do EPIC as I think it is a terrible system.  Now, those who do play EPIC are being screwed by these changes. We call it nerfing because you are changing the rules in the middle of the game.

This isn't a convention with pre-generated characters testing a new game system for free; This is a PAID for game where people have spent YEARS building their characters and equipment. 

When a new person asks the veterans what they think (and they do in the middle of quests), what do you think they will say? I have said, "Turbine has no loyalty to long time gamers and spends most of their time on defeating players and less on quality".

BTW - The original plan was paid expansions but management knew they had a game that was too buggy to have people actually pay for an expansion. You still have a buggy game and yet are forcing people to pay for expansions.

When you create as many bugs as you fix, that is not quality. 

Kimberlite wrote on Jun 14^th, 2013 at 1:06pm:


or the other possibility is that fate points aren't stored anywhere except as a dynamic calculation similar to

Fate points = (ED levels/3) + amount bought from store

it works presently because on TR the ED levels aren't removed, whereas they will be in the future, in which case this formula doesn't work anymore

or it could more complicated than that, but that's a simple possibility why something could look completely different from the outside

Kimberlite wrote on Jun 14^th, 2013 at 1:18pm:


it's unclear, but i'm guessing that making changes like that across the board (previously) are why sometimes paralyzers end up being off the loot tables after they change the crafting system.  i was just trying to show that just because it looks easy doesn't mean it is trivial...could be they see the epic farming/fate points as took hard to code against when they're trying to balancing difficulty...i really don't know

Mokune wrote on Jun 14^th, 2013 at 1:15pm:


Yeah, this is one of those things that don't just sink this game. They sink every game the producers ever touch in the future.

"Oh, dude, you don't want to play XXX. Feather of Sun is involved with that project so you know it will be screwed up!"

I don't think anyone wants to be involved with the complete meltdown this would cause. I also highly encourage everyone with contacts in the gaming news industry to get them on this one now...before it's too late to turn things around. If the news gets ugly for Turbine while they're in the midst of trying to sell an expansion they'll either buckle or they'll go under.

My money is on the moment this hits 2 or more industry web sites saying that Turbine is looking at a questionable system that will wipe previously guaranteed as permanent character development that the beancounters will finally realize that this won't fly and change direction. Until it's in the news though? It's just random whining on the forums and it can be ignored.

Kimberlite wrote on Jun 14^th, 2013 at 1:06pm:


Create View Fate_Point_Total $Char
Begin
$SFP = Select Store_Fate_Points from Player_Character  where Character_Name = $Char
$EFP = Select Level_Fate_Points from Player_Character where Character_Name = $Char
Fate_Point_Total = $SFP+$EFP
End

And don't wipe Level_Fate_Points when the character TR.

Then use the fucking view. Oh and create indexes in your fucking database, especially the Cannith Crafting one, I get Lag every time I try to deconstruct something, just after selecting the recipe or pressing deconstruct, as if it was looking for what to give me in a database without any indexes.

Adding a new field in the fucking database :

Alter database add row TR_Fate_Point = 0 into Player_Character

*rolleyes*
( ok, it's a tiny more complicated than that in both case, but still... and I'm not officially a DBA )

Flav wrote on Jun 14^th, 2013 at 1:49pm:


it has to be a "won't do it" as opposed to "can't".  if they wipe out EDs they have to wipe out the fate points or else it will impossible to make endgame viable for a first lifer versus someone who has "epic TRed" twice and can use three level 4 twists.  although would that really be crippling?  what's a dominant triple level 4 twist setup?

OK, reading the entire content of Piloto's post is more helpful.  I agree with him that the current system actually makes players want to keep TR'ing at 20 rather than going to 25 and then TR'ing.  I actually never understood that rule in the first place.  Finding a way to make players want to go to 28 and then TR makes total sense.  I get this.  It is much better for the game and the player. 

The implementation is where the thought process breaks down, though. 

The idea of Epic PL's is great.  It will make people want to go to Epic cap and then TR.  As long as the Epic PL's are solid enough.  If that was in place from day 1, everyone would think it is great. 

You level to 20 and TR you get a heroic PL.  You level to 28 and TR you get an Epic PL in whichever capped destiny you choose to "bind" (plus a heroic TR based on your heroic levels).  That would make people want to do the epic capping to get the extra PL.  Bingo.  Incentive to play to cap.  That's what they wanted.

The question is:  Why is it necessary to reset the ED XP when your do the Epic TR or heroic TR?  This is the part of the plan I don't understand.  What does it hurt for it to stay?  You still have to level all the way to 28 on your next life to get another Epic PL.  Having the ED XP still present would not change that.  I just don't see any reason you need to reset the ED XP to make the Epic TR and Epic PL system work. 

And giving some heroic XP benefit for that XP earned isn't going to make it worthwhile.  I don't care if I can do two Heroic TR PL's for free by cashing in my ED XP.  I'd rather have the ED XP.  This part of the Turbine has come up with is one that destroys months of work for a great deal of the player base for little to no return.  And unless I'm missing something, it's totally unnecessary.

Kimberlite wrote on Jun 14^th, 2013 at 2:17pm:


This is the shoe I'm waiting to see drop. At this point it's official: making your character better is pointless. The way Turbine wants us to play is to cap our characters, sit at cap, farm whatever gear is available at cap, sell those items for TP point code cards, resell those cards for real world money, and continue this until we've made $30-40k in a year and get banned (while increasing their bottom line dramatically in the process). The new power-gamer vision from Turbine: make money, get banned, resub if you're still up to it and repeat!

I kid...mostly...but what other end-game is there in DDO that Turbine hasn't taken away?

Asheras wrote on Jun 14^th, 2013 at 2:10pm:


From my point of view he is applying the wrong solution to his problem.

Basically the problem is : people prefer TRing at 20 instead of doing Epic Levels.
Why ?

From my point of view : the lack of interesting content  and the fucking grind that is Epic Destinies.  Come on as a Cleric you'd have to be a priest of Loviatar to enjoy levelling GMOF...

What happens with Epic :
- The old Epics are irrelevant, no interesting loot and the Seal/Shard/scroll/Item mechanism make them unpalatable.
- The new Epics are all lost in the ass end of nowhere in overlarge explorer areas... ( Exception : Gianthold )
- The New Epics are all Flagging quests ( with a few exceptions )

As such, they are run once by characters to get the flagging done, then they are left to rot.
The only Epics regularly run are those with high interest : the two high XP/Min quests in the Drow City, The well in E-Star for the Green Scales.

Gianthold is a special case : once again the flagging quests are done once for flagging, but PoP is fast and fun so it's ran as the XP/Min is not bad.... and the loot is interesting.
Same for the other quests, some of the loot is interesting to get. And by farming them you also get relics along the way which will be useful. 
Tor was farmed for the scales... now that everybody has farmed his armor, it's almost only run for flagging... ( flawed scales are more expensive than flawless ones on AH.... )

On the raid side : ... I think I posted it somewhere around here....
Anyway, we have two raids... well one Raid, and a headless chicken-bash navel run...
While I'm annoyed by the retarded 'raise timer' ( especially in Tor... Standard SOP : if half the party is dead, recall, rebuff, reset, reenter .... no timer, would actually make us stay inside and try to finish it. ), it's not the worst retarded mechanism... and Navel Bashing is stacking them ( I'm sure Shade has hard ones about that raid )... Retarded timer on raise, retarded 'throw people off island to death', retarded 'respawns all around in odd places that have been cleared' , retarded 'trap spawning', retarded 'SP drains', retarded 'hand', and on top of the retarded things : uber retarded drop rate for items and commendations... as in you're lucky if you get one fucking commendation... after one hour running around and bashing navels... when Tor will give you 2 to 4 for less time and stress. ( and better loot )
Anyway, before the LVL 25 we had 5/7 raids to use, since then we have 1 and a half ( half for Navel ), and two obsolescent ( Queen and Velah ).

The problem is mainly here : lack of content... there's way more content in heroic level, and to add insult to injury more content is added at heroic level while none is added at epic level...

What if ...this is just me...all Epic XP is put into a 'bank' that you could use post TR on that character as regular XP...OR use on new characters...or something like that. Or conversion into other things...Astral Diamonds or something.
  I haven't really been in the TR discussion, this is one of those I just let the devs handle, I know a third rail when I see it. But...this whole thing is WAY off in the future. They are talking about it now for people's reaction to ideas, and their thoughts on it. I know...radical right? Make your case, but raor Turbine wants this...it's just not the way this place works. Be aware tho...old time MMO designers always always think about power curve, exploits and crap before fun. I don't know why, but that is how they have been conditioned to think...this game, LOTRO, WOW, SWOTR...any of the last generation MMO's.

As far as end game-- I hear you loud and clear. Sadly mandate for the past year has been other things...and from my side 11 months of cleaning up after MotU kept me from talking about any sort of direction or new/revamp stuff...all they heard from me is Blargh fix stuff!

I agree with you Flav.  Interesting content and re-runnable content is the best solution.  If you had 4-5 raids to run at cap and a couple dozen solid quests that yielded good loot you would have people who not only want to level to cap, but stay at cap.

But you can't argue the fact that, as the game is now, once you maxed your destinies and collected your lootz (Which was too easy MoTU and eGH) the only way to improve you character was to do more PL's.  Which would have you stopping at 20.

They did need to add something to the system to make it worthwhile to run your characters to cap, even if there is no raids or end game to make you want to keep them at cap.

majmalphunktion wrote on Jun 14^th, 2013 at 3:58pm:


If all epic xp...and by all I mean the 16.5 million to 21.78 million that a lot of toons have accrued...could be used on future lives for either heroic OR epic destiny xp, then sure, why not, with a couple caveats. Obviously this is more xp than could be fit in to a single heroic life: the lost xp should carry over to multiple lives. And I think you almost have to allow the use of that xp buffer on epic xp as well as heroic.

For me personally I wouldn't care if I could only use that xp on heroic levels. I've got a buffer of about 17-18 million xp. Under the system I'm proposing there that's 4 past lives. THAT I would take as compensation. But that's just me. The problem is that you've promised people one thing and not everyone out there exploited game bugs to get that 16.5-20million+ xp per toon. If you take that promised thing away you almost have to have it optional.

So if you create a buffer that can be used 1:1 for heroic xp, epic xp, or ED xp then sure, that's fine - you're actually adding options since if I want I can just spend that xp to retake all the same ED's for example. But if I can do that I don't see the point in just keeping the system optional. That said, if there's some under-the-hood thing we're not allowed to know about sort of reason that a 1:1 for heroic xp, epic xp, or ED xp compensation for all existing ED xp at the time this goes live would work whereas an optional system would not then heck yeah, go for it!

Munkenmo wrote on Jun 14^th, 2013 at 4:43pm:


While I remain open to a pool of xp that could be spent 1:1 on all 3 types of xp (heroic, epic, ED) this seems so much simpler. Again though, if there's some internal reason that a 1:1 pool that persists through further TR's and applies to heroic, epic, and ED xp is doable whereas just leaving ED xp alone during heroic TR's is not, we'll take the extra options that still give us the choice to fill in all the ED's we had in the first place from that xp pool.