Galadriel wrote on Sep 30^th, 2015 at 8:26am:


Sure.
A recovery strategy for a business like this needs to be multi-pronged.
1. Stop the hemorrhaging of existing players (I think may have gone too far already).  A lot of what we have discussed like QoL fixes contribute to this - getting rid of bugs that noticeably impact the player experience.   Fixing crude vials was not one of these.

2. Increase revenues.  Fastest way is to attract new players to the game - marketing strategy.  Understand DDO and its niche.  Market to it and don't try to be WoW or a Zynga clone.  Get out to GenCon and other cons and make people aware that DDO exists.
A point of caution - in trying to raise revenues, there are likely to be misguided attempts to gouge the players.  Respect your customers - offer them value for money (eg. 4000TP for that stupid Treasure chest was insulting).  If you get the balancing and price point right, many small sales are far better than a few big ones.  DDO has become addicted to its whales (but see point 1, it is losing them).

3. Retain the new players.  No point bringing new players in if you leak like a sieve.  The new player experience has to be better.  For quite awhile, The Grotto (the first mandatory intro quest) was broken and difficult to finish.  It took me ten attempts on a mule account a few months ago - not sure if it is still bugged.
If new players get bugged out on the first quest - what impression will they form of the game.
DDO strength is the flexibility of what you build and the order you do things in and that should remain.
For new players, they should be able to choose a class path and have it viable to 20 at least.  Each class should have 3 class paths as they do now, but they're currently a joke.  Players can still build toons as per normal - no dumbing down of build options intended.

Intro quests to the game.  I think the path into the game could be smoother and more polished.
You should be able to select a guide option (switchable) which recommends what to do next up to lvl 5 (possibly differs by majority class).  This should give new players the ability to receive a recommended quest path(s) - no sparkly paths I promise.   
Also, many of those new quests should be reviewed and polished where required.
The other thing is some tutorials on the key concepts as there is a lot to learn.  Even thingslike choosing quest difficulty.  Lets educate new players that Elite is not for them.  How to put up and LFM and manage it.  etc.   Existing players could help with this.

My objective was to get new players engaged and invested enough to stick around awhile.  There is plenty of content at lower levels and suitable difficulty for new players.  Capitalise on it.

Lots more thoughts on the subject, but I think that sums up what I was alluding to.

DropBear wrote on Sep 30^th, 2015 at 10:19am:


I think this is the bottom line.  I'm pretty sure the ship sailed before Sev, but even if it hadn't - it sure is fucking sunk now after his run.

I'd say the best we have to hope for is their learning from their mistakes and doing a better job on DDO2.  But let's face it, even if they scraped it all and started over, it would still be a cluster fuck because - Turbine.

Lets wait for the data center move...

I'd make a few educated guesses to support the above statement, but since most of you don't listen to them it would be a waste of my time.

DropBear wrote on Sep 29^th, 2015 at 8:41pm:

Forget this ever happening.

You fundamentally mis-understand how executives work in the entertainment business.  They don't give a shit about DDO.  It's the size of a tick on the ass of their division revenues, a piece of bacterium on the behemoth that is Warner Brothers, and non-existent in the view of the ultimate parent, Time Warner.  If DDO squeals up the executive chain outside Turbine for resources, the first thing an "executive" is going to say is, "What the fuck is that product?", followed by, "Just shut it down give me the budget savings."  He/she pads their resume and moves on.  There's no glory in saving the blood-hungry tick from getting crushed.

The only reason DDOs still kicking is no one pays attention.  If execs were half as ruthless with Turbine as they are with Cartoon Network shows, they would've already had the next 5 years worth of updates in the can and everyone working on it would've been fired already.  You'd just be waiting for the updates to drop one by one.  And, as soon as the executives figure out how to do that with video games, that's exactly what they will do. 

You'd best be hoping no one at WB ever pays attention, ever. 

DropBear wrote on Sep 30^th, 2015 at 10:19am:


Sounds good all round to me.

You reminded me of what Arena Net used to do with Guild Wars 1 when it was still being actively updated and had a massive player base. They would hold competitions for skills bars of Henchmen (~hirelings) when a new set of Henchmen had to be released. They followed the same style as Guild Wars 2 of 8 skills based on class and were separated for PvP and PvE. Players would earn various rewards like free accounts, mini-pets (cosmetic pets), rare weapon, armour or shield skins and massive amounts of rare materials and the likes that players could use and benefit from.

Turdbine could easily hold something similar for hireling skill bars and gear, starter build templates for pure classes and so forth and the rewards can be cosmetics, TP or whatever else that's nice. Not that hard to make all the players do the hard work of balancing the game if you dangle some form of reward for them that will get them motivated.

Heck, a simple Turdbine sponsored competition can be easily held for class balance to see what class performs best. There is a speed run records page on the mobos for a basic idea. Get players to run speed records of quest x, y and z as build archetype a, b or c and collect data from it. A simple round of stats can do wonders for a lot of things.

This all has to be done correctly of course. Some players might throw their tantrums as certain nerfs hit but if the overall result is mostly positive, then it can become a thing.

What is dead may never die...

DropBear wrote on Oct 1^st, 2015 at 1:47am:


Yeah, my apologies. That was the idea but I didn't state it very well. Very basic and newbie friendly yet still potent enough to not be an inventory slot in somebodies pocket even for a player who has a massive learning curve ahead of them. Your above average build designer can design multitudes of builds like this that can cater to 28/32 point builds which are still usable. It is mostly to avoid this:

DropBear wrote on Oct 1^st, 2015 at 1:47am:


The builds don't have to be 100% optimal. They just have to be well rounded in a lot of aspects and, for lack of a better phrase, "average".

A tutorial stage where players can replicate combat for them to see what the end level feels like and it's well explained can be used as well. I keep thinking back to the intro to Dragon Age 2. It has you play a high level character to get a feel for the style within the first 5 minutes of the game. If you don't like that style, you can reroll and you just loose 10-15 minutes. You also have something to work towards. Not ideal but it could work.



* Important part stops at ~5:50. May be too much to ever hope for but it's something.

DropBear wrote on Oct 1^st, 2015 at 1:47am:


I have always hated cultures like this. Pity really. If you can't admit you're wrong, the very least you can do is fix the issue at hand so that you are not wrong at the end of the day. Best of both worlds really.

DropBear wrote on Oct 1^st, 2015 at 1:47am:


Forums serve a dual purpose in this regard. It helps weed out the competent from the exceptional. Also keeps the work load lower. However you have a biased set of information as, if taken only from top tier players, the results you get will only cater to the top tier players and will not address any form of casual play. This is good for presenting challenge like the mythical "Reaper" difficulty and for showing limits of classes but bad for those that are happy staying in Epic Hard and get challenged by Epic Elite for example. The in-game tool on the other hand will collect everything submitted but the amount of work to go through all that data will triple, if not more. However your baseline is much more accurate once completed. Largely depends on what you are focusing on at a given time.

On a more off topic note. I was away on a hiatus for a long time so can somebody give me the short version of what did exactly. Quick search shows him as a producer at one time but don't want to read through tons of pages for an answer.

Thanks for the reply and all I have to say is just wow....

Ipad again today, but regarding the exchange between DropBear and Galadriel, I really like the idea of player designed paths, crappy paths do far more damage to the game than the harbor layout they spent so much time changing.

There is room for an arbitrary number of paths, make some for each class be mostly passive and others more active, and explain that in the description.

Also, give each path designer a web page to explain why the choices were made and how to play the class, and link to it from the ingame description. The page could be in the builds section of the forum or on the wiki, but anywhere the builder has some space to tell a new or very casual player how to make the best use of the path and if it's a good fit for what the player wants.

And above all, give credit to the player that designed the path, few incentives better motivate quality work than having your reputation tied to it.

This would benefit the game far more than raising the level cap again would

DropBear wrote on Oct 1^st, 2015 at 7:59pm:

Yeah, this. Stupidest. Idea. EVAR.

The ton of content is the only advantage that a new competitor can't mimic. Well, other than the fanbase, but that's well below 20k at this point, the Pathfinder Online kickstarter started with 3 times that.

And Turdbin throws it away to drive people to new content that otherwise isn't good enough to buy for the fun of play aspect.

DropBear wrote on Sep 30^th, 2015 at 6:44pm:

It helps to never confuse the "entertainment" you consume, with the business process by which that sausage that you generally find tasty gets made.  Especially when it's one of the biggest sausage makers in the world.

The best thing that can happen, if you like the game, is someone peel DDO out of Turbine.  When and how, that's to be seen.  Where does an MMO go when it dies?  Does it truly die?  Questions the market hasn't really answered yet.

A bottled water manufacturer does not really compete with a high-end restaurant.

iliveyourdream13 wrote on Oct 1^st, 2015 at 9:23pm:


Sure, if you compare a niche indie game to one of the most popular IPs in the world it's not going to stand up; my point stands, which is that there has been a resurgent interest in recent years around complex RPGs and they are still being made. If turbine could tap into some of that interest it would be a big boost. 500k may not be a lot in terms of single purchase, but if you could attract 10% of those players, I suspect you'd be doubling the current player base of DDO, and if 10% of those players picked up a VIP sub, that's looking like a pretty fat pay day for any pointy-headed douchebag.

DropBear wrote on Oct 1^st, 2015 at 7:59pm:


Short answer, yes. They're CRPGs, the whole point is complex customization