Technomage wrote on Jan 7^th, 2020 at 10:43am:

You guys better start being nicer to Cripey. Because when he buys this shit, none of us are getting on his server.

Meursault wrote on Jan 6^th, 2020 at 1:49pm:


I couldn't agree more.


Carpone wrote on Jan 6^th, 2020 at 2:42pm:



I think I conditioned myself to the pot drinking/healing "lag". I spam click pots/heals till they go off. Good catch though, as this makes the game feel clunky and unresponsive. 


Carpone wrote on Jan 6^th, 2020 at 2:42pm:



I personally think the graphics are great even after all these years. Although I think its a valid criticism, especially in regards to new players. As most people would most likely see the graphics as a negative in their first impressions.   

Agreed 100% on the cosmetics. Something needs to change.

Carpone wrote on Jan 6^th, 2020 at 2:42pm:



Out-leveled content certainly falls out of favor as theres largely no point in running them. As you pointed out this happens in every mmo. My point was mostly aimed at the detrimental affects when selling items that bypass grind.

Specifically with the release of +3 tomes in the DDO store late 2011. This was the very first instance where raid loot or "pay 2 win" was sold in the store. Closest being mana pots before this. Click here to read the 22 page outcry.

Basically over night there was no reason to farm VoD, Hox, Abbot, Shroud, and Reavers for players who already had the items. As these were farmed constantly for the +3 tomes in the 20th lists. Raids that had a chance to drop a +4 tome like ToD, or epic raids were still farmed. I didnt complain since it meant I could stop farming those raids but it hurt the raiding scene for sure. Keep in mind that this trend continued with the next tier of tome released in the store (+4, +5, +6 etc.). Why farm the 20th lists for tomes when you can just buy them?


Vaultaccount wrote on Jan 7^th, 2020 at 9:11am:

Technomage wrote on Jan 7^th, 2020 at 10:43am:



SSG would never release the source code. Nor would they even have the Pre-MotU source code. At least I highly doubt it. The only way to get a true 'Classic Server' (or any server for that matter) is to have a dedicated group of coders working on reverse engineering and writing their own code whilst servers are still running. This takes a considerable amount of time and effort. If the servers shut down before these efforts are made then its game over. 





Im posting this here for those who may not have seen it on page 3. You're welcome to critique or add things. Whether that be issues from the past or present that have plagued DDO and its player base.

The downfall of DDO

• Shit servers/net code: Unplayable lag, especially in raids. Devs removing game features in hopes of "fixing" the issue. Example: Removing Fvs Archons ambient light and reducing combat sounds. Lag is much better now due to a much smaller player base. However, old 'Input' lag issues remain with actions like drinking pots and casting spells making the game feel clunky and unresponsive.
• Old, clunky, and complicated: Dated graphics, clunky, and complicated. All barriers of entry for potential players.
• Decade old F2P system: What was once revolutionary in late 2009 has now become a massive turn off for new players. Probably the worst F2P system of all mmos right now. A VIP sub is basically a necessity. Heres an example 
• Character power that doesnt reset after a new expansion: Most MMOs use items as character power that eventually get reset with the release of a new expansion. Putting every player on equal footing come launch day. DDO has a decade worth of these game systems without any catch up mechanics creating a snowball effect that ends up hurting new and returning players.   
• Degradation of the DnD theme: Now DDO is just a run of the mill fantasy mmo that happens to have a D20 system. Those looking for a "authentic" DnD experience will be largely disappointed. Heres an example
• Too many servers: 8 servers for the small player base that ddo has is laughable. Those logging in will most likely see a ghost town on most servers. 
• Selling raid loot/bypass items: Great short term profits but at the cost of severely reducing content life. Initially releasing +3 tomes in the store late 2011 killed off about half of the endgame raids overnight which were ran for +3 tomes in the 20th lists. This trend of selling tomes continues to this day. Raid Timer Bypasses and chest re-rolls quickly killed off what little new content there was.  
• Killing off endgame players: Post-MotU expansion killed off the majority of endgame players. Trivializing years of endgame content due to the level increase. Complete lack of new endgame content and constant power creep. The true endgame were Epic Pastlives and Epic Destinies. Not items.
• Digital attention spans and the mmo genre: MMOs have been on the decline for years. Modern digital attention spans getting shorter. People would rather play mobile games or BRs/MOBAs. 
• Separating players via epic levels/expansions: Separating the player base between 20 heroic, 10 epic, and soon to be legendary levels. As well as more than a decade of content and paid expansions. This is hard to dodge and is a necessity for keeping the lights on but it has a detrimental affect to the playerbase.
• Removal of the 'Holy Trinity' design: MotU expansion brought Epic Destinies which allowed players to essentially solo the game (not having to rely on healers). This probably saved the game in the long run due to the much smaller playerbase now. However, I cant help but feel like this impacted a ton of players who preferred focusing purely on dps or healing. Definitely a culture shock for players. Some probably quit shortly after, especially healers which were made obsolete.
• Refusal to sell good cosmetics: A f2P mmo without good store bought cosmetics? Crazy. What you're left with is largely selling ways to bypass artificial barriers or grind.
• Alts arent incentived: Players, especially newer ones reaching epic levels are largely stuck playing one character. Making them feel trapped as the grind needed to reach a competitive level is too high. Veterans who have had plenty of time to participate with the release of each grind are largely unscathed.
• Bugs: The buggiest MMO I've ever played. Leaving DDO to play other MMOs left me with anxiety as I would question if abilities and items were working as intended (legit).
• No PvP: While most players agree there's no need for PvP in DDO. One cant deny theres a considerable portion of players that focus on PvP rather than PvE in mmo's. DDO not having dedicated PvP alienates these types of potential players.
• Bad raid designs: This is subjective but a lot of the raids in DDO, especially Post-MotU are ruined by either an over abundance of puzzles or just bad design. Think CitW, Deathwyrm, DoJ, Babas, Riding the Storm Out etc. Even good raids like LoB were plagued by a mandatory 40 minute clear to the entrance and confusing loot upgrades.

Honorable mentions: Not unique to DDO but worthy of mentioning.

• Communication issues/lack of QA: Some examples: Devs not telling players pre-MotU of a hidden save bonus to mobs Epic Ward that gave extra saves depending on their percentage of health remaining. The fortification bypass portion of the rogues Opportunist Feat not working. Being borked for a year or two until two players tested it in the PvP pit and made a thread about it. I guess the devs didnt want to spend the 5 minutes testing it.
• Baffling design choices/knee jerk reactions: Some examples: In order to make the endgame "harder". Updated 11 introduced increased raid boss damage, health, and increased fortification based on difficulty. This inadvertently destroyed rogue players on any difficulty above normal. As they not only had low health pools but 60% of their dps relied on Sneak Attacks. During 2014 the devs tried to balance Shiradi by giving rainbow/colors of the queen epic pastlife a chance to proc Radiant Forcefield and Adrenline on mobs. This also worked on raid bosses. This procced quite often giving raid bosses a near constant 25% reduced incoming damage and a chance to one shot players. It was removed sometime later in a patch.

Rose-tinted Goggles wrote on Jan 7^th, 2020 at 10:13pm:

Note that the interaction of these 2 make a solution difficult. Simply combining servers could drive lag through the roof. They don't have a competent database developer on staff, and an improperly indexed database lookup with a foreign key relationship can be O(N*M) or worse, with N and M being the number of records in each table. Putting all the players and all their gear on the same server without first addressing lookup efficiency could be catastrophic, and look how poorly the datacenter move/virtualization was handled even when they had the WB resources to fall back on.

That's not to say they couldn't fix their design and then merge servers, but just merging servers would be a terrible idea given their history. Which probably means it's exactly what they'll do.

Meursault wrote on Jan 8^th, 2020 at 12:23pm:


Why do we need 2 restarts per week with only 200-300 active people per server now? Hmmmm?

Lag has never scaled with server population, so made up theories to explain why it would are silly.

Meursault wrote on Jan 8^th, 2020 at 1:52pm:


Population trended upward from F2P launch until MotU, yet lag remained constant over that period.

Population trended downward from MotU until present, yet lag remained constant over that period.

5 Foot Step wrote on Jan 8^th, 2020 at 2:42pm:

You assert lag was constant over the period from from June 2012 to January 2020? We might as well not even be speaking the same language.

Look, I have tremendous respect for you and you've helped me out in the past, but I can't reconcile your claims with my personal experience.

I guess we'll just have to disagree on this one.

5 Foot Step wrote on Jan 8^th, 2020 at 3:33pm:

Your point would be valid if lag and server populations were the only things that changed in the past X number of years. 

Unfortunately, that's not the case and the devs have made constant and sometimes significant changes to the codebase during that timeframe.

When you consider ALL of the variables, it is entirely possible that the server population steadily decreased while lag steadily increased due to code changes, hardware changes and server virtualization changes. 

For all we know, SSG could have said, "Hmm, server population has decreased by 20%.  Let's reduce our VM host resources to save some $$".

Meursault wrote on Jan 10^th, 2020 at 4:18pm:

OK, if this came across as a slam I apologize, my goal was a solid defense against a dismissive attitude. The "Lag has never scaled with server population, so made up theories to explain why it would are silly" and "It's fine if you don't speak statistics" were worthy of Thrud and co., not 5FS, a vaultie I do respect and with whom I'd far prefer a constructive discussion than ad hominem attacks in either direction.

I am a rocket scientist; Therefore, I can apply my theories to rocks (it has that name in the title ya know).


Meursault wrote on Jan 10^th, 2020 at 4:18pm:


Also, applying statistics correctly to a false issue is still applying a high level of accuracy to a pseudoscience.

There are several types of lag and not all of it is related directly to the number of users simultaneously logged in.  Merging will cause some of previous crippling lag to come back that is not present at this time. 

making the "hardcore" server was giving them statistics into how they COULD merge servers (via character transfers - but that has its own issues with guild storage and such). Starting without all of that old data and slack might be the answer to one type of lag, but the data structure and product is still not efficient.

What we probably can agree on is that they keep painting over the rust so much that paint is the only thing keeping it from sinking... but it still leaks like a sieve and the more people on the boat, the more water that comes in.

Meursault wrote on Jan 13^th, 2020 at 9:20am:



Am a rocket science and can confirm this. :p