Please no "silver bullets" in DDO

[NightHiker]

Oh, by the way, I think it also pays to mention that I do not go into a quest with the intent of necessarily killing everything - I also do a lot of sneaking past groups of mobs I don't need to kill - which is another way of dealing with immune mobs whenever possible. I wish they'd support this playstyle more as well, giving players more options outside of just murdering everything.

Cheers,
NH

 

[EinarMal]

After the r10 bs nerf thinking insta kills the only way to go soon if you can hit 140 pks and weirds dgs can probably do it

Instant killing is great, except when it's not. As a primary solo tool good luck in legendary reaper, if you don't have any DPS you just can't do quests solo very well at all. The best wizard build is still balancing DPS (Acid/Force) and DC unless you do not solo at all.

It requires high DC in the newer content, like upper 120's or don't bother. You also cannot contribute on any boss, champ, deathwarded mob, many Raids where you have to primarily DPS the boss.

 

[DBZ]

Then you would need teams or at least casters - physical to easily complete without having to whip out wands on r10 mobs

Would be awesome to see

 

[DBZ]

If we get any more stupid blanket nerfs cuz druids cuz you won't have much of a choice at least insta kills will get the job done grab the first 5 meat n roll

 

[Tesrali (sam-u-r-eye)]

I know some players will like me even less than they already do when I bring up this topic, but I don't appreciate the inclusion of abilities like "Elemental Apotheosis" or "Weakening Mixture" that make certain creatures vulnerable to specific elements for a limited time. For example, iron golems suddenly being harmed by fire, despite normally being healed by it. This completely breaks the immersion of the game, as it disregards the concept of monsters having unique weaknesses and strengths. It equalizes all monsters when it comes to damage, even in cases where it doesn't make sense thematically (especially considering the current bugs with these mechanics). The same issue applies, albeit in a weaker form, to the Holy Power ability of clerics. It's disheartening to see a devil being killed by Unholy Blight as if it were an angel, or vice versa with Holy Smite.
While players should have means to defeat monsters, it's okay if it's occasionally difficult and challenging. In early versions of DDO, Iron Golems were practically immune to all magic, except for a few exceptions like Disintegrate and Comet Fall (physical and untyped damage, regardless of the source being divine or arcane magic).
I don't suggest returning to the extreme difficulty of the past, but the current plan of the DDO developers to provide every caster with a "silver bullet" feels misguided to me.
Allow me to provide an example of how I would improve the situation (I always aim to offer constructive suggestions rather than just criticism). For instance, I can envision sorcerers receiving a passive ability similar to the Pale Master tree for wizards. They would gain access to their elemental form much earlier (similar to how Pale Masters obtain their undead form at level 3). They could then switch between at least two elements, and upon changing their element, they would automatically learn certain sorcerer spells that are related to that element. I'm not particularly fond of Spell-Like Abilities (SLAs) in general, but they could be used in this case as well.
There's much more I could discuss, but I hope the general idea is clear.

Agreed.

 

[DBZ]

You need an ED and epic feat over haul to do that

 

[popejubal]

Every caster has access to at least one reasonably powerful second damage type in their repertoire. It's not at the level that their primary damage type is, however why does it have to be?

On some pulls you're at 70% of damage potential because your primary element doesn't function against one or more mobs however you're still capable with the secondary damage type, just not a rampaging god out of control like you are with the primary.

70% is not at all accurate. When your enhancement tree gives you major bonuses to only one element and actively penalizes you for taking a different element, you aren’t at 70% of damage potential if one of your elements fails completely.

 

[popejubal]

Then you would need teams or at least casters - physical to easily complete without having to whip out wands on r10 mobs

Would be awesome to see

It would be awesome to see a game where teams are easily available.

Requiring a party to function effectively in a game with DDO’s level of population spread out over as much content as we have is a terrible idea. I’d love to party more but the game just doesn’t have the population to support game mechanics that stop solo players.

If you want to party and you choose to party, that’s awesome. Requiring parties for quests is not awesome.

 

[Br4d]

70% is not at all accurate. When your enhancement tree gives you major bonuses to only one element and actively penalizes you for taking a different element, you aren’t at 70% of damage potential if one of your elements fails completely.

Which trees penalize all other elemental damage types?

I get that all Sorc trees penalize one other damage type but which penalize all other damage types?

 

[rabidfox]

Trying to get multiple elements with spell power, crit, and crit damage is a tetris nightmare that goes beyond limited spell slots/trees being a problem. There's gear set bonuses, LGS(dino) spell crit damage, etc., while also having decent enough DCs to not have every mob reflex (etc.) save, the gear isn't rigged to really support swapping element choices per mob type. Not having immunity bypass would require sweeping revamps of all sorts of parts of the game; so it makes sense we have immunity bypass, it's cheap to implement and requires less dev time to achieve the same end result even if it feels a bit lore breaking or awkward at times.

 

[Br4d]

Trying to get multiple elements with spell power, crit, and crit damage is a tetris nightmare that goes beyond limited spell slots/trees being a problem. There's gear set bonuses, LGS(dino) spell crit damage, etc., while also having decent enough DCs to not have every mob reflex (etc.) save, the gear isn't rigged to really support swapping element choices per mob type. Not having immunity bypass would require sweeping revamps of all sorts of parts of the game; so it makes sense we have immunity bypass, it's cheap to implement and requires less dev time to achieve the same end result even if it feels a bit lore breaking or awkward at times.

Immunity bypass breaks the game because it makes everything about highest DPS on builds or GTFO.

It may not be obvious to a player who runs on the premise that absolute power is obtainable and desirable but that paradigm, particularly when it is attached to a lot of grind is deadly for a game over time. People just burn out on the chase and then they realize that everything feels the same every time they play and it's over.

 

[rabidfox]

Immunity bypass breaks the game because it makes everything about highest DPS on builds or GTFO.

Immunity bypass lets people solo in a game where groups can be hard to get (and/or be viable in a group vs being told "No fire casters" in the LFM for X quest). It's got good and bad edges like any game design choice. They could make multiple element casters viable, but the amount of time and effort it would take vs having devs do work on other stuff is where it's going to come down to. Can't just remove bypass and call it a day; it was put in to solve an issue that still exists.

 

[Tesrali (sam-u-r-eye)]

Immunity bypass lets people solo in a game where groups can be hard to get (and/or be viable in a group vs being told "No fire casters" in the LFM for X quest). It's got good and bad edges like any game design choice. They could make multiple element casters viable, but the amount of time and effort it would take vs having devs do work on other stuff is where it's going to come down to. Can't just remove bypass and call it a day; it was put in to solve an issue that still exists.

Compressing questing to make grouping more available is the better long term solution.
If you want to solo, of course swapping to an impulse setup and taking ruin/gruin is definitely an option.
DDO being made into a solo game though is just bad game design. There are many better single player games out there. We have always offered a unique party based experience.

How to compress parties while leveling?
1. Have a reaper debuff apply only to certain players if they are running underleveled content.
2. Have a reverse buff apply so everyone can run all content 5+ levels higher than themselves or something.
3. Have rotating content incentives so that what is optimal shifts enough so that people aren't running the same things.

If they don't want to do what ESO and GW2 have done with automatic power adjustments, then they can simply remove power leveling penalties and squish the stats again. Obviously different classes have different breakpoints where they get more powerful. Level 8 and 9 for casters makes them decent and level 12 makes them strong. Melee start out strongest and get weaker and weaker.

 

[rabidfox]

Compressing questing to make grouping more available is the better long term solution.
If you want to solo, of course swapping to an impulse setup and taking ruin/gruin is definitely an option.
DDO being made into a solo game though is just bad game design. There are many better single player games out there. We have always offered a unique party based experience.

How to compress parties while leveling?
1. Have a reaper debuff apply only to certain players if they are running underleveled content.
2. Have a reverse buff apply so everyone can run all content 5+ levels higher than themselves or something.
3. Have rotating content incentives so that what is optimal shifts enough so that people aren't running the same things.

If they don't want to do what ESO and GW2 have done with automatic power adjustments, then they can simply remove power leveling penalties and squish the stats again. Obviously different classes have different breakpoints where they get more powerful. Level 8 and 9 for casters makes them decent and level 12 makes them strong. Melee start out strongest and get weaker and weaker.

Those are all viable options. Doesn't change that immunity bypass is a cheap/easy implement that gets the job done. DDO has a small dev team, where/how they spend their time matters; until such time they want revist and do all the work required to make immunity bypasses not needed then the least they should do is make sure it's equally available for the various caster classes out there.

 

[Guntango]

Immunity bypass breaks the game because it makes everything about highest DPS on builds or GTFO.

It may not be obvious to a player who runs on the premise that absolute power is obtainable and desirable but that paradigm, particularly when it is attached to a lot of grind is deadly for a game over time. People just burn out on the chase and then they realize that everything feels the same every time they play and it's over.

You’re going to have to cite your data on that, because it smells bad to me.

For instance:

Of the top 10 D&D based MMOs, representing about 370M active players, 3 are listed on the gamer’s best games with the most grind list.

Cited:https://mmo-population.com/top/2023

https://www.thegamer.com/best-games-most-grinding/#valorant

A quick and dirty google search leads me to believe that grind is not, in fact, a cause of low active gaming populations.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

Trying to get multiple elements with spell power, crit, and crit damage is a tetris nightmare that goes beyond limited spell slots/trees being a problem. There's gear set bonuses, LGS(dino) spell crit damage, etc., while also having decent enough DCs to not have every mob reflex (etc.) save, the gear isn't rigged to really support swapping element choices per mob type. Not having immunity bypass would require sweeping revamps of all sorts of parts of the game; so it makes sense we have immunity bypass, it's cheap to implement and requires less dev time to achieve the same end result even if it feels a bit lore breaking or awkward at times.

I somewhat agree with the first part; universal spell power/lore typically ends up as ~half damage compared to elements (not even counting the lack of good spells). But fixing it definitely wouldn't be that hard at all.
Just buff potency/spell lore items to reasonable numbers (why are universal spell lore items only 12%????) and problem fixed. Swapping crit multiplier gear (dino) is easy.

 

[DBZ]

Stat squish garbage they aint upping that much anytime soon

 

[rabidfox]

Swapping crit multiplier gear (dino) is easy.

I agree to some extent. But not all slots are covered by dino for spell crit damage; and LGS only covered certain element types while others were missing. So if one uses goggle slot for cold(etc.) spell crit, one can't swap to a force spell crit item there. There's gear gaps that would need to be dealt with.

I've proposed the idea in the past that they could do spell crit damage potency type items. Or they could make all spell power/crit/crit damage provide 75% (randomly choosen number) of their value as a potency type to all other spell powers (ie- LGS t1 Electric Spell Critical Damage 20% (Enhancement) would provie 15% spell crit damage (Enhancement) to all other elements), this would let any off-element always have a minimum baseline for performance (to be decent but not as hard hitting as main element choice). But it would still come down to dev time vs the ease of immunity bypasses.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

Or they could make all spell power/crit/crit damage provide 75% (randomly choosen number) of their value as a potency type to all other spell powers

This is basically what we have already, which is actually the problem. 75% sounds reasonable, but when you multiply 75% spell power with 75% crit chance and 75% multiplier you get ~50% damage. Universal should be 85-90% so when multiplied becomes 75%.

 

[rabidfox]

75% (randomly choosen number)

Like I said, randomly choosen. It was just an easy to do a quick example with 75%. I was trying to explain the concept; ideal balancing of those numbers is a whole other debate.