Update 63 Preview 1: Deck of Many Curses

[Falkor]

Hey! There's that Fhrek guy with an opinion!! Get 'im! *cue benny hill music*

Only time that '10k sent xp' curse would be worthwhile is if it was put on an item that was going to be fed in the first place. But whose going to try one of these curses on items they aren't going to use?

I did think of one possible good use scenario for these, and thats hardcore. It depends on how the ingredients drop and if they are available low level. It also is dependent on if 'cursed' gear can be traded or sold. Those are a lot of depends. Some incontinent person may need those Depends, so I'll stop with the depends.

 

[Zvdegor]

Well choosing the effect for a price or get it rng. These are the 2 choices. I personally prefer grinding mats or whatever I need to put a chosen useful effect on my gear over a randomly generated boost which also needs tons of grinding.
If its random effect it better be temp.

 

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

DDO is a game of marginal increases. Every past life, extra DP/AP from tomes, every augment, mythic boosts, reaper boosts, tetrising and re-augmenting gear just a for a tiny gain. Entire groups of people play around that concept, and entire groups of people play without giving it much thought; DDO has a wide array of players out there. These new quest are extreme challenge at cap aimed at endgame players, so it's going to bring out the people the squeeze every ounce of power from their characters that will repeat these quests over and over for the curses.

The simple question is this, do you grind mythic/reaper boosted gear currently to optimize your tetris?
If you do then you'll likely be one of the voices that wants to be able to remove/overwrite the curses as the current grind is already quite massive to optimize.
If you do don't then you might not care about the curse grind and being able to remove them as you'd likely be happy to just toss anything on your gear.

Yes I do grind reaper/mythic. I got my +1 Dino DC reaper artifact ring for my caster for example. I've got multiple +2 helms. I'd love to hit all these with the roll of the dice. When gear set-ups change I regrind. Grind gives me something to do, in fact, I enjoy it. I would rather grind gear at cap, in r10, than do past lives which are faceroll. Leveling in this game is dead because of all the power creep. The boring nature of it sells Otto's Boxes and Otto's boxes are cancer. I'm not opposed to the current implementation of reaper/mythic and I would prefer curses to be on top of those than alter that existing system.

I agree that rerolling would be more friendly of a system but honestly I don't care. I've seen both implementations in Path of Exile. Rerolling would make it their "Chaos Orb" which is the basis of their entire gear system and economy. (Chaos is like Gold.) The permanent bonus would be a "Vaal Orb." Gear acquisition in Path of Exile is much more interesting than DDO so I'm very happy to see a similar style system integrated. In some ways I think they "solved" random loot generation as well as crafting.

As many people have pointed out set bonuses have ruined this game. I hope the devs will at a "set bonus augment slot" and change all existing set bonuses to an augment in that slot. Then you can mix and match set bonuses. The only way forward is just to power creep that system unfortunately.

 

[Falkor]

Glad someone in this game enjoys the grind.

I don't grind for gear and find it a pointless endeavor, knowing it'll get nerfed and higher power gear will be released. To me, its one of the least enjoyable aspects of the game and a negative play experience. I absolutely DESPISE grinding gear.

I could care less if my IoD ring has a +1 mythic to it or not. If I happen to get one, peachy. If not, peachy. Not going to put in hours of my life to get that only to see it get devalued in some inevitable nerf down the road, or as the level cap increases. This approach takes a little longer for me to get ingredients and sets, yet I don't have to run the same quest 4,000 times to get a +1 mythic item.

SSG has nerfed and stealth nerfed my gear and characters far too many times to ever put the effort in to farm gear like that. I'm glad to pick up what drops as I quest and PUG. Nor do I use crafting systems for much the same reason.

This entire cursed deck thing is, in my opinion, fiscally irresponsible and I fully believe there are better ways to direct development efforts.

 

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

Glad someone in this game enjoys the grind.

I don't grind for gear and find it a pointless endeavor, knowing it'll get nerfed and higher power gear will be released. To me, its one of the least enjoyable aspects of the game and a negative play experience. I absolutely DESPISE grinding gear.

I could care less if my IoD ring has a +1 mythic to it or not. If I happen to get one, peachy. If not, peachy. Not going to put in hours of my life to get that only to see it get devalued in some inevitable nerf down the road, or as the level cap increases. This approach takes a little longer for me to get ingredients and sets, yet I don't have to run the same quest 4,000 times to get a +1 mythic item.

SSG has nerfed and stealth nerfed my gear and characters far too many times to ever put the effort in to farm gear like that. I'm glad to pick up what drops as I quest and PUG.

I feel you bro.

For casters it isn't as bad as for melee IMO. You can still use Sharn gear---and I do---since having 7 more PRR per piece makes it better than newer gear before I get bonuses on that stuff. (E.x., Right now I'm running Esoteric and then Dino set.)

 

[saekee]

Devs there is a simple solution:
1) use x materials = random, fixed, as is
2) use 12x materials = random but previewable—you generate the result but can choose first before using

or something like that

 

[Zvdegor]

Glad someone in this game enjoys the grind.

I don't grind for gear and find it a pointless endeavor, knowing it'll get nerfed and higher power gear will be released. To me, its one of the least enjoyable aspects of the game and a negative play experience. I absolutely DESPISE grinding gear.

I could care less if my IoD ring has a +1 mythic to it or not. If I happen to get one, peachy. If not, peachy. Not going to put in hours of my life to get that only to see it get devalued in some inevitable nerf down the road, or as the level cap increases. This approach takes a little longer for me to get ingredients and sets, yet I don't have to run the same quest 4,000 times to get a +1 mythic item.

In DDO there are players with different ways to play the game. Some of them love to accumulate as much stat/power/skill/etc as they could to play the game at the highest difficulty, bring everything out of a build it capable of and seek challenge all the time. Some of us enjoy different aspects of the game. If the new curse system can offer something for everyone in a good way why not?
Dont forget these players keep the game changeing and improving cause the devs have to follow their pace. Otherwise the servers would have been shut down for years.

 

[CBDunk]

I'm actually pretty heavily offended by the "Make this item worth 10,000 sentient XP" curse. Angry about it, even. It's the devs saying "Hey, that nice item which you spent all that time acquiring, we're going to make it garbage and then rub the fact that it's garbage in your face because we're taunting you to destroy it and giving you a pittance in return".

You're assuming that you put the curse on a powerful item. Now, if instead you cursed a cannith crafting blank and suddenly it was worth 10k sentient XP... that's a rather different feeling.

The BEST thing about this new system is that it includes some truly rare / unique options. I'd like to KEEP the 'sink like a brick', +/- threat, and other potentially detrimental effects... because there are cases where they would be GREAT. Indeed, I'd like to see MORE of that and less of the +2 MRR, generic bonus, kind of things. I'd like to see them keep adding MORE wacky effects over time. However, that only works if the effects are replaceable.

In a replaceable curse scenario I'd go ahead and curse my end game gear, replacing 'negative' results as I went, then go back through to replace 'useless' results, and only then maybe try to get 'optimal' results. However, that last seems unlikely given the high RNG involved. Also, at some point my end game gear will change as new options come out... and then I'd repeat the process to whatever degree I was able to complete before the gear changed again. Meanwhile, there'd also be the option of cursing cannith blanks and then turning those into potentially very nice crafted gear for leveling or to complete the tetris on a specific build.

Thus, I can easily see even replaceable curses resulting in a massive, possibly unachievable, grind. Whereas fixed curses would start out that way... it just wouldn't be plausible to go for a full set of 'useful' curses, let alone 'optimal' curses.

 

[Nickodeamous]

if this goes live the way it is, can we all agree that reaper crafting should be dropped from 75 to 50 fragments or even lower? The decks offer either instant gratification or instant misery. They are practically giving us a lottery system that gives us instant boosts...while reaper frag crafting is painstakingly long and arduous. The only difference, is that you know what you are crafting with reaper frags...here, you don't. I think its way past time to lower that threshold.

 

[Fhrek]

if instead you cursed a cannith crafting blank and suddenly it was worth 10k sentient XP... that's a rather different feeling.

And you're assuming that getting the 10k sentience curse will enable regular craftable item to be consumed for sentience which actually they aren't.

As for now, only named items and special Wheelon rewards are avaliable as sentient food. Regular light blue and green board items are not. So, unless the curse morph the regular item into named/special... the 10k sentience curse is wasted, not even useful as sentient food.

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

Big if here but...

IF they properly take out the negatives and leave only neutral or positive effects in RNG then at least it wouldn't leave an item worse off than before.

Just left with risk of FOMO, I guess?

 

[CBDunk]

And you're assuming that getting the 10k sentience curse will enable regular craftable item to be consumed for sentience which actually they aren't.

Yes, I'm 'assuming' the curses do what they say they do.

 

[rabidfox]

If the new curse system can offer something for everyone in a good way why not?

All the vocal response to wanting to be able to overwrite/remove the curse indicates it doesn't offer something for everyone currently. The base concept of the curses is great, but it needs implementation improvements to make some of us happy. So with changes then it could offer something good for everyone.

 

[Fhrek]

Yes, I'm 'assuming' the curses do what they say they do.

Yes, the curse say the item worth 10k sentient exp

Got this one today while testing

But, the catch must be, it doesn't make the item consumable.

So, if the curse is on a consumable item, it is fair game. But... if the curse is on a non-consumable item, will it be morphed in a consumable item?

Have someone been able to test it?

 

[rabidfox]

if this goes live the way it is, can we all agree that reaper crafting should be dropped from 75 to 50 fragments or even lower?

I think it's currently too expensive regardless of the curse system; I also think it needs to offer all the reaper boost options not just some (as there's a few boosts that can't be bought). I also want a way to add mythic to gear without RNG. I'm a fan of RNG for potential fast loot and raid rune/reaper frag/etc. systems for longer grind to get guaranteed results (part of why skeleton's raid bothers me where the 2nd chest is pure RNG and thus annoying compared to other raid loot). We lack purchase options for mythic right now and the curse system could go either way depending on how feedback is taken; but hopeful the system is tweaked for the next preview.

 

[Zvdegor]

Big if here but...

IF they properly take out the negatives and leave only neutral or positive effects in RNG then at least it wouldn't leave an item worse off than before.

Just left with risk of FOMO, I guess?

by Steelstar
[6:31 PM]
There's a number of effects being removed/replaced/adjusted based on player feedback (as well as technical issues for some). So far, this includes:

Removing Curse of Stone (weight/sinking)
Removing the Threat Boost/Reduction elements of all Curses that currently include them
Removing Curse of Superior Augmentation (Augment Slots, for technical reasons that would eat your augments)
Removing Curse of the Mythical Blessing (grants a Mythic bonus, as it explodes the entire stacking system)
Removing Curse of the Deckmaster (the set bonus, as players pointed out the potential impact on items with relatively malleable set bonuses)
These aren't the only changes we're planning on making before next Preview, and we're still talking through other elements of player feedback. Thanks for the feedback so far!

 

[DeathTitan]

please make the curse rerollable

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

Yeah I saw that Zvd. Just not sure if that's it or if there is more negs to root out.

If they got all the negs out properly, that would be ok I guess, even if not Ideal...

 

[Fhrek]

I think it's currently too expensive regardless of the curse system

Agreed. Even the system to crunch and acquire reaper fragments isn't perfect, since we can't crunch some items (I looted a Reaper enchanted Wand of Blasting, but it can't be crunched for frags... bummer)

I also want a way to add mythic to gear without RNG.

One possibility would be is enabling named mythic loot to be crunched and reward mythic fragments like reaper enchanted are.

 

[Zvdegor]

Yeah I saw that Zvd. Just not sure if that's it or if there is more negs to root out.

If they got all the negs out properly, that would be ok I guess, even if not Ideal...

Well see in prev 2