To SSG; The endgame and the mountain we climb

[woq]

Absolutely, I felt like we were going in circles so I dropped it, but thanks for pointing this out. All of the alts I started in the last 5 years have come from HC. We’ve even asked guildies to keep a tank and healer first lifer alt in the wings just in case we’re short for raid nights. Yet, apparently, the game is not alt friendly.

Hmm, I wonder if there is some fundamental misunderstanding here. I don't think most people think first life characters are useless or unable to contribute at all, especially if it's a healer or a tank. For me at least it's more about the feeling of progression and the prospect of how to go about it and how much you need to do to reach certain goals.

I think a good way of looking at it is actually quantifying what is an acceptable amount of time to "complete" a character or a particular part of a character? Never is an acceptable answer when it comes to absolutely picture perfect gear imo, I think it's fine to always have something more to strive for. But when it comes to the canvas that you build on - that is the past life base for an individual character.. I think the several years seems crazy.

Do you guys think the amount of grind to catch up to the completionist characters is currently in a good spot? If you had to start over from scratch right now and had no access to the obnoxiously priced otto boxes, would you? I probably wouldn't and that's part of why it's so hard for me to convince or even ask friends to play DDO with me.

^The above is not a rhetorical question, it's an actual question. I think it's perfectly fine if we disagree on this.

 

[Mordenkainen]

I am sure you know it but there is a command to load/save your hot bar layout

/ui layout save/load [name]

 

[Lazuli]

Alts will obviously never be as good as mains unless you put in the same grind. In this case, a first (or low life) alt is equivalent to a new player starting the game. That's where The Guide suggestion came into play - a bit of an incentive to get to a certain threshold of lives and then you can boost your way up a bit to get more up to speed.

As if I didn't know that lol The point of this thread is that the grind has gotten out of hand for the devs.

 

[rabidfox]

Do you guys think the amount of grind to catch up to the completionist characters is currently in a good spot? If you had to start over from scratch right now and had no access to the obnoxiously priced otto boxes, would you? I probably wouldn't and that's part of why it's so hard for me to convince or even ask friends to play DDO with me.

I never touched an Otto box until Dread gave me them and I had already hit total completionist on my main before then. I enjoy the leveling process so my 2nd favorite character is slowly going thru lives; I also like experimenting a bunch of that alt by trying less than ideal builds to see if there's anything nifty hiding in trees/builds that normal get ignored at cap.

 

[woq]

I never touched an Otto box until Dread gave me them and I had already hit total completionist on my main before then. I enjoy the leveling process so my 2nd favorite character is slowly going thru lives; I also like experimenting a bunch of that alt by trying less than ideal builds to see if there's anything nifty hiding in trees/builds that normal get ignored at cap.

I probably shouldn't have mentioned otto boxes tbh it wasn't the point of the message. I loathe their existence as a shop item and the price tag on them but since they came up earlier in the thread I got sidetracked. Sorry about that, that wasn't my intention to be accusatory? or anything like that.

 

[Speed]

I probably wouldn't and that's part of why it's so hard for me to convince or even ask friends to play DDO with me.

Why not just start a new character on a separate slot to play together?
Thats what I did when another questing coupon appeared in previous year.
I brought my real life friend as new player and we still have fun with another characters.
We have a plan to bring 2 more friends here since coupon is available again.

 

[woq]

Why not just start a new character on a separate slot to play together?
Thats what I did when another questing coupon appeared in previous year.
I brought my real life friend as new player and we still have fun with another characters.
We have a plan to bring 2 more friends here since coupon is available again.

I haven't been able to get anyone to stay, they rather play other games with me than DDO. So we play other games and I play DDO on top of that.

Edit: I did start new characters to go, there's just too much friction or some of that old musty game smell that you either love or.. don't.

 

[Sheikra]

3-yes, precisely, the incentive to have alts has been lost. Having a healer alt , a dps alt, a oriented CC alt... was good for end game and for the game in general. But the game now discourages alts so much that it's becoming rarer and rarer. It would be good to recover it, it would be good to move part of the grind rewards from being vertical (improving a single character) to being partially horizontal (improving several, as with raid runes, it is still more work to equip two characters than one, but the rewards benefit the entire account). Extending the grind horizontally would make the power creep and therefore the differences with the new ones not grow so exponentially.

I'm going to call out this idea of "no alts" as kind of BS. I only started playing "endgame" in the last month, and already I've seen so so so many people that have several alts. Usually people have 1 main toon that does a lot of reincarnation, and then some number of raiding toons. The idea of running TRs on a bunch of toons, I agree, is unappealing and effectively discouraged, but that does not mean people don't have alts. You yourself said you have 7 characters, right?

 

[Br4d]

The game would be healthier if, instead of always growing vertically, it grew horizontally, with more distant peaks of vertical growth. And hey, if you think there is so little difference, that shouldn't be a problem for you.

I think almost all MMO's and more than few ARPG's would be better off with an emphasis on horizontal growth instead of vertical growth.

With horizontal growth you offer everybody the full value of the work you do on the game. With vertical growth you primarily offer the achievers the fruits of your labor and basically tell everybody else to go jump in the lake (without actually providing the lake since that is horizontal and not vertical.)

Most MMO's lean slightly towards the horizontal by resetting cap with each expansion. Everybody gets the benefit of the new content and the achievers can grind their hearts out *getting back* their lost power.

However I recognize that the DDO model is such that it will just continue to offer more and more to fewer and fewer until somebody turns the lights off, maybe quite a distance out.

 

[Speed]

I did start new characters to go, there's just too much friction or some of that old musty game smell that you either love or.. don't.

Because you see different (stinky lower) numbers?
I play since 2010, but I do breaks for other titles (TR is not enough to keep me playing repetitive content) and then back when something new appears (like quests/archetypes, not small changes) or someone is interested to play together (this works best).
Having stable player companion is now game changer for me.
I met many nice random players through years, but as you know, the gap in level range changes quickly if you do not sync together (everyone plays when they can).

 

[Lazuli]

I'm going to call out this idea of "no alts" as kind of BS. I only started playing "endgame" in the last month, and already I've seen so so so many people that have several alts. Usually people have 1 main toon that does a lot of reincarnation, and then some number of raiding toons. The idea of running TRs on a bunch of toons, I agree, is unappealing and effectively discouraged, but that does not mean people don't have alts. You yourself said you have 7 characters, right?

What I have said is that it is strongly discouraged, that many veterans do not want to make new alts, that many are turning them into mules, and that there is too big a mountain of grind for new players. I haven't said that none has alts, but I have frequently heard complaints about how alts aren't as good for the raid as mains, and how they seem increasingly weaker.

I have said that it would be good to slow down the vertical advance for a while, and move the grinds to a more horizontal direction. You cannot grow vertically at full speed without a catch up mechanism. And then people like you cry because the game is too easy, and you want nerfs that affect the powerful and the weak.

I have also said that I don't think the devs will lift a finger to solve this, even though it goes against the retention of new players and is annoying for many veterans, so you can rest assured. You don't need to get excited.

 

[Col Kurtz]

I'm going to call out this idea of "no alts" as kind of BS. I only started playing "endgame" in the last month, and already I've seen so so so many people that have several alts. Usually people have 1 main toon that does a lot of reincarnation, and then some number of raiding toons. The idea of running TRs on a bunch of toons, I agree, is unappealing and effectively discouraged, but that does not mean people don't have alts. You yourself said you have 7 characters, right?

of course, players definitely run alts..

But the performance of a group full of alts can be fleeting sometimes. Even LH raids usually need a core of a couple characters that are a little thicker than one lifers are, for the main roles. Though, those groups can be more fun without those players that nuke everything in the blink of an eye

 

[Geezer]

IMHO, games are supposed to be for fun. All the Ubers here have made the game into work. And to me, WORK is one of those nasty 4 letter words.
I play 3 main characters each day for about 60-90 minutes each and have approx 65 past lives on each. I try to make each toon a different class and play-type (melee, ranged, caster etc). That way, its more fun to play them. I usually just do heroic on r1 or sometimes elite if I really dont like the quest. In epics, I usually do level 20-25 quests on Elite and after 2 its mainly hard for faster levelling. It seems like the Ubers are constantly pushing high level reapers and I simply dont think thats fun at all. People should just ingore what these people are doing and simply try to find decent people to group with and talk to, and make the game fun again. Hamster wheels, if they be for past lives, or grinding the latest gear isnt fun. If you were to get all the best high level raid gear for a toon, the next expansion the gear will be more powerful and you can start all over again. Fun - WOW!

 

[Cheeps]

I'd be happy if there was just some more quests base level 22-25.

Gotten to the point where when I hit lvl 20, I duel box that toon using a lvl 30+ toon and doing end game stuff to power level the lvl 20 up to 30.
(I'm sure that's going to be nerfed soon)

 

[T.O.]

IMHO, games are supposed to be for fun. All the Ubers here have made the game into work. And to me, WORK is one of those nasty 4 letter words.
I play 3 main characters each day for about 60-90 minutes each and have approx 65 past lives on each. I try to make each toon a different class and play-type (melee, ranged, caster etc). That way, its more fun to play them. I usually just do heroic on r1 or sometimes elite if I really dont like the quest. In epics, I usually do level 20-25 quests on Elite and after 2 its mainly hard for faster levelling. It seems like the Ubers are constantly pushing high level reapers and I simply dont think thats fun at all. People should just ingore what these people are doing and simply try to find decent people to group with and talk to, and make the game fun again. Hamster wheels, if they be for past lives, or grinding the latest gear isnt fun. If you were to get all the best high level raid gear for a toon, the next expansion the gear will be more powerful and you can start all over again. Fun - WOW!

It wasn't work. I get paid for work. So I did it for fun. My career is also not easy. My skill's were earned not given. Because I never took the easy road. I enjoy challenge over a walk in the park. How people want to play is up to them.

 

[droid327]

I'll repeat a suggestion I made earlier:

Let us gain EPLs at cap, without having to delevel back to 20, but with a 50% premium on the XP earned

I.e., you can ETR normally, get your EPL, and then level back to 30 (~8M XP). Or, you can play at cap, store up 12M XP in an item (and earn no RXP while its still feeding), and then trade it in for an EPL without de-leveling.

That would let people progress alts while keeping their characters in a state where they can participate in endgame content, and I think its that forced tradeoff - the mutual incompatibility between character progress and endgame access - that frustrates players most.

 

[Br4d]

I'd be happy if there was just some more quests base level 22-25.

Gotten to the point where when I hit lvl 20, I duel box that toon using a lvl 30+ toon and doing end game stuff to power level the lvl 20 up to 30.
(I'm sure that's going to be nerfed soon)

The worst runs in the game for me are 17-20 and then 22-25. The 17-20 is much worse because XP vs 3rd life 17-20 is just weak. 22-25 is more because you have to run the same quests each time to make those levels. It was much worse before Epic Catacombs.

 

[Guntango]

What I have said is that it is strongly discouraged, that many veterans do not want to make new alts, that many are turning them into mules, and that there is too big a mountain of grind for new players. I haven't said that none has alts, but I have frequently heard complaints about how alts aren't as good for the raid as mains, and how they seem increasingly weaker.

I have said that it would be good to slow down the vertical advance for a while, and move the grinds to a more horizontal direction. You cannot grow vertically at full speed without a catch up mechanism. And then people like you cry because the game is too easy, and you want nerfs that affect the powerful and the weak.

I have also said that I don't think the devs will lift a finger to solve this, even though it goes against the retention of new players and is annoying for many veterans, so you can rest assured. You don't need to get excited.

I’m going to say that I don’t know anyone without at least one alt.

 

[Cheeps]

The worst runs in the game for me are 17-20 and then 22-25. The 17-20 is much worse because XP vs 3rd life 17-20 is just weak. 22-25 is more because you have to run the same quests each time to make those levels. It was much worse before Epic Catacombs.

17-20, really?

I usually run that missing quest in harbour 5 times, it takes 5 min and has lots of exp for lvl 17.

Then I boot over to wheloon and do those quests because they have lots of exp.

Gets me to lvl 19 where I run around shav wilderness and do the lvl 17 base madness quests.

But yeah, lvl 22-25 does suck and I'm not a fan of catacombs or epic catacombs.

 

[Br4d]

17-20, really?

I usually run that missing quest in harbour 5 times, it takes 5 min and has lots of exp for lvl 17.

Then I boot over to wheloon and do those quests because they have lots of exp.

Gets me to lvl 19 where I run around shav wilderness and do the lvl 17 base madness quests.

But yeah, lvl 22-25 does suck and I'm not a fan of catacombs or epic catacombs.

I can't stand running the same quest over and over again. I occasionally run R1/E back to back.

The quest I run a lot of is Lords of Dust, about once daily just because it is quick and easy. I'll run it R1/E and then R1 daily until 20 which is generally about 4-5 days depending on if I am just bouncing on for a few quests or in a 4 hour grind session.