Alright Skoodge, seeing as this is probably your ultimate post about teaching the dumb fucks at SSG how to fix their game ill tackle your list. Now, does SSG borrow devs between ddo and lotro? Thats something we have to keep in mind as lotro is still just slightly more
popular than ddo. Perhaps SSG is focusing more on lotro rather than ddo. I mean, it took them
7 years to make Reign twistable...
I like the idea of a
F2P Launch 2.0 update that brings DDO up to the modern age. This includes a server merge preferably before this update. Lets take some time to think on the fact that Korthos hasn't changed in 10 years. Yeah....
ten years!! Back in 2009-2011 the
Anger's Wrath Set and the
Goggles of Insight from Korthos were best in slot for a fresh level 20 melee. Even the
Runic Gloves were worth keeping at cap. Thanks to the power creep over the years you could literally loot better random gen items on normal in the Korthos quests...
What happened to being excited you looted a rare named item? Now its just about getting the perfect random gen rolls on an item. Which I dont mind but the named items feel much better to loot.
The most important change that needs to happen:
Merge all of the servers down to 2. I dont care how hard it is. Make it happen. Then release
DDO 2.0 F2P "remastered" Update. Skoodge wrote on Aug 20
th, 2019 at 8:55am:
Know your audience – design with new, old and meta players in mind. Understand nerfs hit new and casual player harder than the meta you’re trying to hurt.
Reward players for playing your way.
Don’t punish players for running how they want to run.
Know your product – which quests are most popular and why.
Good loot x Good XP x Fun = sales. If the quest isn’t fun, it better have some amazing loot and XP.
This seems to be too difficult for them.
1. They don't give a fuck and only work for the paycheck
2. Mobo white knights pulling them in a million directions
3. They dont give a fuck
4. Publisher/contracts telling them to make more money or put restrictions on content?
They always seem to fuck up on the quests. The main reason Epic Von 3, Von4, Spies, Two toed, Wiz king, etc. are run constantly is due to them being
mid sized (relatively fast to clear),
easy to get to,
linear,
easily cleared on EH for fresh alts,
give great xp, and are
somewhat enjoyable to complete. That's it, add In some nice loot to top it off.
Skoodge wrote on Aug 20
th, 2019 at 8:55am:
For new players:
More free packs and classes.
Drop haggle.
Increase plat caps, drop sales penalties from vendor transactions.
Decrease AH tax to 10-15%
A new players should get a package with medium collectable, jewel, and ingredients bags, 5k plat, a minor XP pot, a slayer pot, a jewel of fortune, at least a +1 tome of their choice, a skill tome, and basically anything you want them to know they can buy in the store. Don’t make them track this down. Stop making new players feel like beggars when they join the game hoping older players throw them crumbs while they walk around lost.
Or rework the Kothos starting sets to be in-line with today’s DDO’s challenges.
Exclusive bags should not exist. People are selling on the AH and burning new players what should be provided to a new player when they join.
Improve chest rewards named items in general to make all players, but especially newer players, more excited about opening chests.
Create better starting paths for classes and give a class bundle of better gear starting out. The game is harder than it was when you went f2p 10 years ago and people have to solo more. Give them help starting off.
Create new, stronger gear sets for either Necro 1, 3BC, or Sands for a power boost around level 4-7.
Drop amount of Ings needed to craft ToEE gear. Make that pack worth running and crafting.
Increase XP for all paid content. Using my XP pass guide lines, all paid packs should provide better XP than their F2P counterparts AND there should be more F2P counterparts.
Favor pass – that was on the list when I made it 2 years ago. You did that, good job. Could still use a bit more tweaking and improvement for the old ones, but it’s still better than it was.
Transport officers need to be added to Sands, the Vale and any other wilderness missing them. Remove the shard option in Wheloon – it’s just tacky and lacks class.
I dont have much to add here, all very solid improvements. I think random gen is in a pretty good spot besides maybe weapons and armors. Adding new named items and buffing old ones to all harbor and marketplace quests is needed. Make people excited to run these quests again. Buff Korthos items obviously. Give all old heroic packs for free up to level 10-12. Give monk, Fvs, half-elf, warforged for free etc.
Skoodge wrote on Aug 20
th, 2019 at 8:55am:
Create an actual Shard economy:
Lower prices of shards in store
I dont think any time should be spent on this besides lowering the prices in the ddo store. The Shard Exchange is a failure and shards have been duped to hell.
Skoodge wrote on Aug 20
th, 2019 at 8:55am:
Balancing issues/power crawl:
All existing light/medium/heavy armor needs at least a +10 bump to AC and should automatically come with a boost to PRR. You have wizards in the game with nearly as good of AC and PRR as your melees. Give the boost where it belongs – to the people who get hit the most. Existing light armor needs a massive boost to max dex. The people wearing medium and heavy armor should be more protected and shouldn’t be dying quicker than the casters.
Unnerf vorpal – it never was nearly as OP as instant kill caster builds are now. If they make the roll, it should be an instant kill – remove the “if under this many hitpoints” part. The monsters almost never have that few hitpoints.
Improve heal pots – self healing needs a massive bump especially for newer players. Whatever the pots have now, double them. Remove the penalties from the silver flame pots. They were shy of useless 8 years ago, they’re completely useless now.
No cool downs on pots.
FIX YOUR HIRES – top priority here. I gave details on another post, but this really should be a priority.
I’ve got a longer balance list too – you’ll have to contact me for that.
Agree 100% with armor AC and vorpal. Pots are fine but remove silver flame penalties. Pots are useless in Reaper anyways.
Hirelings should be left alone, don't waste anymore time on them. Better yet, remove the Reaper self healing de-buff. For five years they forced solo self-healing builds and killed off teamwork based builds (healers, bards). Now they want us to change? All this does is force players to bring a sluggish hireling making playing the game a chore. Introduce more reapers or champions with self healing de-buffs if you want. Hirelings are fine for heroic, non-reaper use.
Skoodge wrote on Aug 20
th, 2019 at 8:55am:
DDO Store needs to be reworked:
Cash only purchases are good for your bottom line and should exist – but they also need to be available from the store and not from a webpage window.
Quest pack bundles – most older packs need to become F2P but if you want to be uptight about it, they needed to be bundled together at a reduced price.
Automatic 5% discount for ViPs for store purchases. Give them a reason to subscribe.
Allow VIPs to buy packs, races and classes (if that hasn’t been changed already).
Better sales, more variety of sales – stop running a “boost your guild” sale once a month, that’s not where the money is. New players aren’t starting their own guilds.
Rework daily rolls to represent a promotion of goods to new players and a slight reward to existing players. Right now it comes off very, very, very much like “we don’t want to give you anything good for free.”
Various:
Rework old epic crafting system, improve the old items. Make shards and seals unbound and tradable. This will give a new interest in old quests and encourage people to run and by said quests. Tradable shards and seals will be a massive boost to the Shard exchange and help stimulate that economy.
Rework Grouping menu – it’s horrible. At minimum the quests should be arranged by packs so we don’t have to search through 15 quests trying to find the next in the chain.
Remove the public grouping option, it’s annoying.
Auto-grant quest when someone joins to make it easier for new players.
Give a warning to the players or leader when someone overlevel tries to join the group.
I dont have much to add here, all good stuff. They should really fix the /who issue and Iconics picture in the LFM from not showing. They should really lower much of the ddo store items. The shared bank slots are so fucking expensive. Its ridiculous.
Skoodge wrote on Aug 20
th, 2019 at 8:55am:
Cosmetics:
Improve and promote cosmetics and pets. Some of the new RL skins were choice, but overall armor designs are mostly *meh* at best. Cosmetics are some of the easiest money in gaming today and you guys seem to really be missing out. Maybe the sales are good enough you don’t have to, but I’ve only seen maybe two sales are skins in the last two and a half years.
There are literally games out there making money ONLY on selling cosmetics. The game is basically free (or a one-time purchase) and you can’t buy anything that increases the power crawl – but the company makes bank just selling different skins.
You have the ability to dye armor in LoTROL. Some will say DDO is about game play but every other game on the planet says that if you offer good skins, people will pay for them. This is really, really easy money you’re missing out on by not offering good enough products or promoting your existing ones.
I could be wrong, but I’m willing to bet mirrors sell more than the in-store cosmetics and part of that comes from customer awareness. I always hear guildies talking about what to mirror, I never hear anyone mentioning buying skins.
The winter fest boosts only working with store bought skins is a good idea. Slight boosts that only work with store cosmetics and dyes will boost sales in this department. You just need to really explore some new designs and offer less items that look like they were designed by an intern using paint (no offense).
This is a huge issue. They could make a killing on cosmetics yet they dont even try to make any. When they do, the cosmetics mostly look awful.
Something as easy as making the
Epic Helm of the Red Dragon match the White, Blue, Black, Green, and Silver Dragonscale armors. Put that shit in the store for like 500 ddo points or something. Hell, make a special quest where you fight an onslaught of dragons and have these as rare drops.
Make actual good looking armors ffs. Dont use that "
has to be grounded in the world of Ebberon" bullshit when players are literal gods running around with +22 stat items. Dont make sci-fi stuff obviously but make some actual good looking armor.
Skoodge wrote on Aug 20
th, 2019 at 8:55am:
PR:
Lynnabel is one of the few staff members you have that has a healthy relationship with the community and it would behoove each individual member of your team to think long and hard why that is. Because it feels like she cares about our having a good time and she’s doing what she can to improve our experience and not running around slapping us on the wrists for…basically having fun.
You have improved to a degree, but usually all your customers want to know is you hear them, you’re concerned and you’re taking the steps needed to fix the problem.
The first time I rage quit was because of the falling through the walls (toons and monsters) glitch. It was devastating for game play and very frustrating. Post after post went up complaining about it on the mobos.
The team’s response? Crickets.
For fucking months.
I dont really think much work here needs to be done. Respond to some bug posts and update us what you're working on. Besides that, let Lynnabel calm the masses of white knights with her typo fixes. Focus more on changes and making content.
What does piss me off is withholding information of critical game mechanics. During the 2010-mid 2012 era the endgame meta for casters was CC and Insta-kill. In 2013 the devs responded to a thread on epic mob saves. It just so happens that there was a
hidden mechanic under the
Epic Ward given to epic mobs. That mechanic was:
Epic Mobs have reduced saves depending on how much percentage of health they have.
75%= -2 to saves
50%= -4 to saves
25%= -6 to saves
Anyone remember mobs always getting fingered around that 25% mark? Well yeah...thats why. Withholding such critical information boggles my mind. Although, these are the same people who thought it was a good idea to give the Shiradi Double Rainbow/Colors of the Queen a chance to proc Radiant sheild on anything you hit as well as give them Adrenaline.
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