http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/197269/postmortem_kingdoms_of_amalur_.php?...

From comments:
"I never felt like I was challenged, even playing the game through on hard, I only died twice (and both of those were during my attempts to run as far into areas that outrageously out-leveled me), and I'm not a really skilled player".

Dev reply:

"Thanks for playing!

In fairness to your point, Reckoning was tuned to be a little bit on the easier side. Playtests gave us a pretty consistent 4 on the "How difficult is this game, 1 being too easy, 10 being too hard?" question, which we felt was probably about right for our target demographic. And in fact, about two-thirds of Reckoning's players played on the easiest difficulty setting.

Having said all that, we were aware of the vocal minority wanting something harder, and in fact were working on a nightmare difficulty mode as free DLC when the studio shut down. Alas!"


I did play this game, its extremely easy, you basicly can spam mouse left button and you win versus any enemy up to game boss.
This was on hard (highest game difficulty). I never died once despite rushing into enemies.

But most 2/3 of players played this one easiest setting.

Steiner wrote on May 6^th, 2014 at 5:18am:


Yup, the reason for lack of raids, TR's, casual and solo styled dungeons. On the other hand, to keep us endgame fanatics happy, they offer 25 completions on a raid to gain one item.

I think it took them 6 years to figure out that the demographics was players in the 30's and not teenagers.

If you have ever pugged in DDO, then you know that the demographics are the same.

The biggest eye opener for me in terms of players was EE GH. Before that i couldn't really see if people were good dps or not... the only way to tell was like gear setup stealing aggro on a boss (abi, claw, weapons, etc). I was amazed how terrible peoples dps was, to the point where it was usually 1 or 2 people carrying the other 5/4 through an EE quest.

Kills isn't really a meter, there were are a lot of people who come in at the last 10% for the ego - mostly DC casters i might add.

Something like damage meters would have nixed this a long time ago. Unfortunately DDO is too basic for that, and i think that is largely why you end up with a couple of arrogant pricks trash talking all of the time when often they have copied something from the forums that is broken, or unbalanced. Many of them have no idea what to do in the quests that require more than pew pew afk.

There was a bloody good spreadsheet a long time ago that had the overall DPS of specific builds (Monster/Blitz/etc). They were around 500 DPS, give or take 50. It is a pity that the only reliable method for calculating this is theorycraft in the best possible scenario (you can't take into account how retarded someone is) or beating down a portal and screen capping the damage/hits/attacks.

I've been unpleasantly surprised in EE pugs often enough that now I go in prepared for extended boss aggro even on my gimp toons. Not that I have any non-gimp toons.... Really, if there were any justice in the world my toons would be the unpleasant surprise for the pugs. 

Holy shit, the game looks really good.  I'll definitely look for it on a steam sale.  How did no one ever hear about this ever?

AtomicMew wrote on May 6^th, 2014 at 6:06am:


Probably one of few games, finishing which i have like 0 memories about it after few days (aside from drow chick).

I advise to skip it

�ed wrote on May 6^th, 2014 at 5:56am:


Warner bros.

When was the last time you ran an EE that you think would succesfully complete if you had to go afk? There arent enough good players left to make EE feel fun, carrying the pay2win crowd felt like a chore, esp when they bragged about their "ubers"

I'm surprised you're still sticking it through in ddo, its been going from bad to worse since motu.

Steiner wrote on May 6^th, 2014 at 5:27am:


I have met players and seen them in chat channels some times when I forgot to disable advice, who at lvl 14+ don't know that some spells require spell components. I have met level 25's who had no idea that enhancements aren't something done at levelup and couldn't find little + symbols where they could level up stats to get rid of the Red Exclamation mark.

You would poo yourself hearing of some of the people I have met from pugging a lot over the years.

NaturalHazard wrote on May 6^th, 2014 at 7:38am:


I always thought that these were the poorest of the poor who couldn't afford to buy EDs.
Maybe I was wrong.

Numbers of past lives or gear or epic past lives don't mean shit at all.
There are so many "new" completionists, new guilds with new folks, they universally suck, period.
People with fat long past lives list in their bio dead in first EE encounter or stray mob left behind.
Multi life melees joining rare decent lfm auto summoning hire, can't buff themselves for shit, just because they do not know better, stuck in "pug hell" because vets are just too pissed/disappointed/have no reason at all to put any lfm up.
You would still pick any old timer or older guild, it's a cliche but experience comes with time spent.
Tell me it's not true.

And "end game" being "run EH 374 quadrillion times to make your toon better ", people forget how to play well.

Now get off my lawn

Quote:


TBH im too uber to quit. I could never solo EE in any other game (because those games are balanced...). Now i amuse myself by playing builds that "shouldn't" be able to do it. To be fair tho the builds are hit and miss My PRR monk was a beast, but jesus monk is boring. I don't know how you do it. My next stop is going to probably trying to make an awesome Bard. I think the odds are stacked against me. Swashbuckler may change that. P.S. song implementation sucks.

I'm really not about to put the time and effort into a new game. The closest to RPG i play is Dayz.

Eve had some great concepts, but after killing your 9000th space pirate it is a bit yawn.

AoC still has some draw. Mostly because you could kick someone from your group and kill them repeatedly if they annoyed you. Played that in beta and release, doubt i would ever go back to it tho.

Diablo could have done it, apart from my latent mistrust of blizzard - being banned before i even downloaded the client for selling currency could have also played a part in it. I played for 30 mins and realised there must be some mechanic there where the end of the dungeon is the opposite of where you look ...

Ima waiting for EverQuest

And now back to fixing the pool robot... =(

�ed wrote on May 6^th, 2014 at 5:31am:


If people playing the game are having fun, they win DDO.

If you play the game and suffer because everyone is not up to your standards or whatever shit you pretend to be, you lose DDO.

Illetirated wrote on May 6^th, 2014 at 10:08am:


so what you are saying is, if people dont carry their weight, and you aren't willing to make up for it while smiling, you lose?

what actually happens is:

people not knowing how to play the game make it not fun, and you lose ddo

you stop playing with people who made your playing feel like suffering, start having fun alone or with a competent friend, and you win ddo.


i bet you were the last person picked for kickball teams every single time, and it burns your asshole to this very day.

If you ruin other people fun, they are not losers, you are.

You might find fun in playing the role of a pile of shit, but no one has ever had fun carrying a pile of shit.