Skoodge wrote on Feb 17^th, 2020 at 3:46pm:


Did it ever occur to you that the amount of shit posting here would go up if a dev was directly interacting with the community?

I would submit that direct posting by a dev would result in more extensive trolling by a certain segment of the vault community and that would have a negative impact on the ability to have a cogent conversation.   

It's probably better that they don't post and just lurk and read.    The issue isn't whether they should or should not read threads here.  The issue is whether it makes sense for them to post in them publicly.

Asheras wrote on Feb 17^th, 2020 at 3:54pm:


Did it ever occur to you to go back and look at our interactions with SSG employees in the past?  I'd say there was a higher level of respect given when they were interacting with us than since they've completely stopped (though I wouldn't suggest Jerry testing that theory...).

Asheras wrote on Feb 17^th, 2020 at 3:54pm:


And yeah, that might be the better option.  My main point is I sincerely feel that, shit posting aside, the vault is well worth their time.  Far more worth their time than trying to split the wheat from the chaff on the mobos.

Technomage wrote on Feb 17^th, 2020 at 11:13am:


I never understood why they can't or don't post here.  Its not that hard to make a deniable sock.

Asheras wrote on Feb 17^th, 2020 at 2:28pm:


Implying that he's "one of the intelligent posters" =/= promoting PL nerfs on the mobos...   

Asheras wrote on Feb 17^th, 2020 at 2:28pm:

Possibly valid, but not at all what I was talking about.

I'm saying Lynnabel is unpopular here now because she stopped posting honest observations and started posting what Sev wants to hear.

I'm also saying she stopped posting here because posting what Sev wants to hear here will get her flamed and she knows it.

Yes, they could get from the motherboards what they can get here, but to do that they'd have to allow honest communication and stop favoring rabid fanbois, which Sev's ego will never allow.

Meursault wrote on Feb 19^th, 2020 at 3:58pm:

I left 4 years in, after watching them fuck things up for two.

They've had 10 years since then. 10 years of exponential growth in fuck-ups. So at this point, "fixing" things involves stripping back the last 12 years of development and starting over.

I hopped back in about 5 years ago. I ran one quest and was shocked at how they'd managed to double or quadruple down on the game's problems, large and small. Fucking lag? Still? Are you for fucking real? And how have they managed to make the inventory tetris even worse?

There is no fixing this game. Once upon a time, it was a real gem. But somewhere around 12 years ago, they started trying to be like all the other shit MMOs out there. Everything that made it unique was watered down to feel like every other shit MMO - from active combat to itemization to endless grind. Does anyone here even remember that DDO once billed itself as the no-grind MMO?

Strake wrote on Feb 19^th, 2020 at 10:38pm:


Wait, what?

When the fuck was this?!

When was DDO trying not to be super grindy, and how did they do it?!?!?!

noamineo wrote on Feb 14^th, 2020 at 1:07pm:

For as much as people like "it" for being more involved with the game then most devs and interacts better with the community then the actual community dev, she is still is a piece of shit for using a sock account on the forum to influence the discussion by pretending to be a player.

Strake wrote on Feb 19^th, 2020 at 10:38pm:


I had an absolutely shocking and slightly depressing epiphany a few months back that may very well have killed the game for me.

The 1st obvious part was that the only real way to save the game (and the smartest move) would be to move towards DDO2.  The same game with a newer, updated engine and graphics.  While a real investor with a clue might be harder to find to finance it (mostly because a savvy investor is going to investigate the team/company before hand), with the right kind of PR this type of thing can happen on kickstarter where they can milk the whales and boomers and gen-xers with nostalgia hard-ons.

And here's where I stopped logging in:  even if they got the finances and hired some decent programmers to produce something fresh, up-to-date and without the handicap of the spaghetti code: this team will still Turbine it the fuck up.

They had a hot streak going there for awhile with reaper and RL, but every decision they've made for well over a year now has been *meh* at best but most have bordered on the colossal fuck up side.

The players council has become an official joke, the new gear is always just insanely OP or pointless (as if designed by people who don't know what classes need, just arbitrarily flinging states on random items), nerfs happen because they can't plan ahead, the grind is getting ridiculous, xp and about a million other things still need serious overpasses but they continue to use resources to patch absolutely harmless "exploits."

They can't prioritize, they can't balance and even given a fresh start, they're still going to fuck it all up.

I love the game but it's so Turbined up right now I can't even look at it 

Strake wrote on Feb 19^th, 2020 at 10:38pm:


QED

The pitch to investors was incredible. We all knew "a new dungeon a week" wouldn't pan out, but the "we are going after the 2 million D&D players by having instanced dungeons balanced for a party of four that no one else can do with the ruleset" got them money. It was a sustainable subscription   They abandoned that long ago.  Each time you get a dev, it is like they don't know what AD&D was about, ignores the previous devs had developed and just started doing what other MMOs do (badly) and can't compete.

It will remain a niche until they can get someone who understood it was about a party of heroes and not "I enjoy Dwarf Fortress' definition of fun, which is, and I quote, 'losing'".

Fuck heroes and fuck the players.  This is a DM "wins" game based on how they work harder to nerf something that a few players exploit vs. actually fixing what impact the majority of players.

Asheras wrote on Feb 23^rd, 2020 at 7:32pm:


This is what has killed the game for me.

The problems for DDO is (was) created by a single person who did not understand the playerbase, Kate Paiz as she lead the game from 2007 to the DDO:EU launch. 

Say what you want about Judith Hoffman, James Jones or even Fernando! or Robert Ciccolini it is Kate that put the game into this awful position.   Blaming the current dev team for the mistakes by the ancient and long gone developers is pointless.

Yes ever time I think of the mistakes made by the Devs under Kate I get beyond made, it infuriates me.   She had no clue and ignored everything said to her from the player base, including her hand picked mournland group of yes men, who f'ing agreed with her.   She changed her mind more often than she changed her clothes. 

And it doesn't help that a few devs doubled down on her ideas after she left.     The Devs today are paying for her stupidity.   Her decisions have painted the Devs into a corner and the amount of work it would require to fix is undoable in today's game because of financial issues.

What could have been!

Did you know the Dragontouched Armor and Shields are the exact same system as Green Steel Crafting?    Yes I wrote that correctly.   Based upon a single forum post where the player complained about the struggles to create green steel blanks the whole system was hidden from the players and we lost shields and the fourth quest.  And she didn't understand the compliant in the first place.  The player made a Green Steel Great Crossbow rather than a Rapier.   

Did you know that Meridia was a new central hub for multiple adventure packs, even though it is located in the center of a Wilderness Adventure Area?

She made many decisions that we are paying for today, 10 god damn years later.

All those individual crafting systems that don't synergize together, her decision.   Grind until you puke and do it again.   Make supporting builds unfun and basically useless in quests.   That's right... 

Don't get me started on Clerics.  Oh wait I already am.   Instead of fixing the problems with clerics lets create two other healer classes that have their own problems.   Clerics are still fucking broken.  And now in Reaper I can't even heal myself.   Really?   Great fucking fix.