8th past life and why I quit DDO(again)

[Vua]

I miss the laugh emoji.

Maybe we can get AI's take on it through the Master of Reactions next post?

 

[The Narc2]

It is amazingly hard to have a conversation with some people.

Oh well, you showed your hand. Hopefully Cordovan does the right thing.

I agree 100% and the dont need to silence him as he suggests, its just his approach is so inappropriate and not a proper form of argumentative debating.

to be clear what I mean;

you shouldnt be asking if someone ”off their meds” when posting, its a direct insult, and then you most certainly not be bragging two posts later about how ”amazingly easy it is to irritate people” to flame/troll.

I second your intonations in the post I quoted.


P.S. And normally I dont agree with you on anything, but this is definitely a “Timeout” Timmeh Moment!!

 

[Tumideon]

Agreed good marketing opportunites have been missed for sure, like every hardcore server(not the new weaksauce, carried by twinked vet cheesycore), or even when the Dungeons and Dragons movie came out would have been an excellent time to market.

But remember one thing marketing cost money(something SSG tries not to spend, eg. customer service) and you need to understand the point of the OP post in this thread, why does the xp go up for an 8th life when there are so many lives. When they finally changed it from 3 lives they should have just got rid of it altogether as in fact it inhibits players from joining the game. Both marketing and the right decision on past lives were not made/done because of greed.

Giving away past lives that paying whales, earned one way or another would only aggravate the whales and defibiitely at this point the game cant take that stress point. I am deducing that whale contribution to the game is likely over 90% of the revenue the game earns, I would consider your $2000 dollars a year a whale sized contribution, of course maybe I am delusional thinking that is whale sized.

Dang, yeah good point. Forgot about the DnD movie, BG3 as well, and a bunch of other things I'm sure.

This thread has certainly got derailed, but OP is right on that, the increased XP per life is the same stupid penalty that we used to have with death negative experience putting us in the black. Nothing like wiping thrice in Wiz King when the Sands Module (4?) came out and carrying a whole level's worth of negative experience.

I've been (lazily) looking for the Swedish holding corp's balance sheet to try to figure out what DDO makes/loses - internet keywords cannot be too expensive to bid on, I work in the defense sector and even our marketing doesn't breaching 5K/month. I'm sure there are whales spending AT LEAST that in a single month on AS and XP pots for their multi-boxes.

And yeah, all things are relative I suppose. 2K is definitely a lot, but no where near as much as I spend on other crap I really don't need for hobbies that I cannot do except for a few times a year during Hat Creek or Mammoth, I saw a stream where a dude rolled dice until he hit level 10 or something like that, had to have been at least a couple grand in DDO points for all of that AS.

 

[Buddha5440]

I agree 100% and the dont need to silence him as he suggests, its just his approach is so inappropriate and not a proper form of argumentative debating.

to be clear what I mean;

you shouldnt be asking if someone ”off their meds” when posting, its a direct insult, and then you most certainly not be bragging two posts later about how ”amazingly easy it is to irritate people” to flame/troll.

I second your intonations in the post I quoted.


P.S. And normally I dont agree with you on anything, but this is definitely a “Timeout” Timmeh Moment!!

Iwas insulted before I ever reacted with an insult. The onus is on them.

 

[The Narc2]

Iwas insulted before I ever reacted with an insult. The onus is on them.

Even if you thought you were insulted, the forum guidelines clearly state to report and not to react with your own insults. clearly you have just admitted you threw out insults, not that they werent obvious anyways.

 

[Guntango]

There is a paywall. That you are not literally forced to pay it is beside the point. What matters is what you get if you pay vs if you dont pay, or in other words the game you get to play if you play vs if you dont pay. There is a massive difference and I know that I would never start playing the game in the current state, and I think that it is reasonable that players like me should be part of the target audience among new players.

Please run your post through an AI before you reply, and dont bother replying if all you are going to harp on about is the semantics of the term "pay wall".

Nah, he’s right.

 

[VinoeWhines]

Hello,

The exp on heroic is complete garbage logic. I just wanted to say that really lol. I can't tell you how much fun I've had on DDO but having to repeat sagas because I don't own all of them and forced to deal with this clear pay wall after I've spent well over $600 now on my account and my wife's ($1,200) dollars mind you. So as someone who very much enjoyed DDO love the game the 100% increase in heroic exp is the worst MMO design logic I have ever seen in my entire life. At first I didn't care too much and it didn't really bother me. But now honestly redoing sagas right after I did them because I haven't bought the new ones man it's worse than a dumpster fire. I have played through the game 8 times now and repeated sagas in the past on legendary which is fine, but doing it in heroics is pure torture. So yeah, I dropped the game my wife and I really just are so bored of trying to find exp from quest and being under leveled because we don't have isle of dread, limbordia, or any of the newer stuff.

I get if you already have 100 past life's or something but as someone who just hit 8... Yeah I can tell you something, as a normal person with a life working 8-5 every m-f with church, and other things going on ain't no way. I can see why people quit after 8 past life's, I didn't think it was that big of a wall but it's bigger than the great wall of China...

Now I know a lot of elitist here will say I'm wrong because it's so "fun" but man... If it was actually fun to be put through a meat grinder of sagas again and again, well I think the player count speaks for itself on that concept. But I look at the game as a casual person playing an MMO and I feel like DDO has no casual players anymore. Because anyone that's stayed on DDO is people who fought through the lag. We need more casual people to rise up because I get it, you have 100 past lives and perfect gear and every DLC, I get it I know you played since 2006 or 2008 whenever. But dude... I started in 2023. I only have 700 hours almost.

Moral of the story too long didn't read: HTR 100% increase in exp is horrible. Game needs to be more accessible to casual people. On my 8th past life got to 15 this crap is boring, not fun, many reasons why.

Hi there, fellow gamer.
You can play the game fine at Cap with what you have.
If you want to TR, just Epic TR and you can get most of what you need in that, mostly. Unless a particular build requirement.
You can be a First Lifer and play End Game.
You can be a First Lifer and play in Reaper 10, even Solo if you know the game well.

 

[Shear-buckler]

Nah, he’s right.

About what?

 

[Buddha5440]

You bring up the actual problem and the answer to "why do you care what other people do?" We care what other people are doing because the developers keep designing the game around those players. Content keeps getting harder and harder and it is based on the better players. Every raid comes out with almost everyone playing it on hard because the players are not good enough to do elite or R1. If the best players were as weak as the rest of us, the difficulty of new content would not be cranked up as high as it is.

Past lives are great. They are the thing that keeps me playing. But it is definitely a problem when spell penetration checks and DC's are designed to make the game challenging for people that have all past lives. The purpose of getting the +9 spell penetration from past lives should be to make it so that you go from a 50% spell penetration success rate to a 95% success rate. But that only works if they are considered a bonus and not factored into the calculations when deciding how difficult new content needs to be. Having all the past lives, especially when coupled with great gear, should simply make the game very easy, because the entire point of building up power is to circumvent challenge. If you wanted challenge you wouldn't be purposely making yourself stronger.

We have such a massive gap between the most powerful and the average player that game balance becomes impossible. Thankfully they added casual and reaper so we have 14 difficulty settings now instead of 3, but they keep making the 4 lowest difficulties way harder than they need to simply because some of the players are extremely strong. It takes way, way to long for raids to be played on elite or R1 by the majority of pick up groups. It takes literally years before the power of the average player is finally strong enough for people to be able to play on the 4th of 14 difficulty settings. That is a problem caused by designing the game around power most people don't have.

Content keeps getting harder yet we have first life toons running R10??? Yeah that must be tough.

 

[Shear-buckler]

So because you do not like what I say, I should be banned???I don't like what you say but I respect your right to say it. You seem to want to silence me.

No, because you are posting only to insult, irritate and derail the thread you should be banned.

No one is trying to silence you because of your position on the topic, in fact I have trying over and over to get you to actually adress the topic and engage with the arguments and to get you to rationally respond to my positon. I welcome you to dismantle it and show me where I am wrong.

Lets try again and see if you will rise to the occasion:

In life, people also randomly get sick and die. By your previously stated logic, SSG should intentionally design the game to randomly delete player accounts because 'that’s just life.'

Applying real-world hardships to excuse bad game design doesn't make sense.

The current model might have been fine years ago, but today, there is a massive backlog of non-free expansions that holds a significant part of the popularly run content in the game. A lot of people who should reasonably be the target audience will be immediately turned away when they realize the 'free' game isolates them from the rest of the community unless they buy a mountain of old expansions.

Worse, every year brings a new paid expansion that makes the problem worse. If it is this bad now, how bad will it be five, six years down the line?

I care about new player attraction and retention. Defending a system that actively drives new players away because 'that's life' doesn't help the game survive.

 

[Buddha5440]

No, because you are posting only to insult, irritate and derail the thread you should be banned.

No one is trying to silence you because of your position on the topic, in fact I have trying over and over to get you to actually adress the topic and engage with the arguments and to get you to rationally respond to my positon. I welcome you to dismantle it and show me where I am wrong.

Lets try again and see if you will rise to the occasion:

In life, people also randomly get sick and die. By your previously stated logic, SSG should intentionally design the game to randomly delete player accounts because 'that’s just life.'

Applying real-world hardships to excuse bad game design doesn't make sense.

The current model might have been fine years ago, but today, there is a massive backlog of non-free expansions that holds a significant part of the popularly run content in the game. A lot of people who should reasonably be the target audience will be immediately turned away when they realize the 'free' game isolates them from the rest of the community unless they buy a mountain of old expansions.

Worse, every year brings a new paid expansion that makes the problem worse. If it is this bad now, how bad will it be five, six years down the line?

I care about new player attraction and retention. Defending a system that actively drives new players away because 'that's life' doesn't help the game survive.

The topic is that in one post you say there is a Pay Wall and then in another post you say you never said there was a Pay Wall and said there is no Pay Wall, even when you said there was a few posts ago. Then you go and put words into my mouth claiming I said something I never said.

 

[Shear-buckler]

The topic is that in one post you say there is a Pay Wall and then in another post you say you never said there was a Pay Wall and said there is no Pay Wall, even when you said there was a few posts ago.

Words are funny, they mean different things to different people. When I say pay wall I dont mean exactly the same thing as you do when you say pay wall. That is fine. That is why when I noticed that we operated on different definitions I explained exactly what I meant by the term and, most imporantly, what my issue with the current situation is.

You have to understand that the problem with the situation is separate from what label you decide to put on it. You are free to call it what ever you want.

Let me restate the issue:

The massive backlog of non-free expansions holds a significant part of the popularly run content in the game. A lot of people who should reasonably be the target audience will be immediately turned away when they realize the 'free' game isolates them from a significant part of the game and community unless they buy a mountain of old expansions.
Worse, every year brings a new paid expansion that makes the problem worse. If it is this bad now, how bad will it be five, six years down the line?

If you are upset by my use of the term pay wall I am happy to call it a pay palisade or pay hurdle, or whatever you want.

Then you go and put words into my mouth claiming I said something I never said.

I have done no such thing.
You made the argument that since a game system is like life it is well designed. I am only applying your own principle in an other example. The obvious conclusion is that your "appeal to life" is a deeply flawed argument.

 

[Buddha5440]

Words are funny, they mean different things to different people. When I say pay wall I dont mean exactly the same thing as you do when you say pay wall. That is fine. That is why when I noticed that we operated on different definitions I explained exactly what I meant by the term and, most imporantly, what my issue with the current situation is.

You have to understand that the problem with the situation is separate from what label you decide to put on it. You are free to call it what ever you want.

Let me restate the issue:

The massive backlog of non-free expansions holds a significant part of the popularly run content in the game. A lot of people who should reasonably be the target audience will be immediately turned away when they realize the 'free' game isolates them from a significant part of the game and community unless they buy a mountain of old expansions.
Worse, every year brings a new paid expansion that makes the problem worse. If it is this bad now, how bad will it be five, six years down the line?

If you are upset by my use of the term pay wall I am happy to call it a pay palisade or pay hurdle, or whatever you want.


I have done no such thing.
You made the argument that since a game system is like life it is well designed. I am only applying your own principle in an other example. The obvious conclusion is that your "appeal to life" is a deeply flawed argument.

What 'massive backlog of non free expansions are you talking about? They are given away for free every year now.

 

[Shear-buckler]

What 'massive backlog of non free expansions are you talking about? They are given away for free every year now.

You are talking about the "Free Questing Coupon" which gives access to the most adventure packs for free. That is not at all the expansions I am talking about, but it has its own issues. If that code is actually driving new players to join and stay in the game I think it is abysmally bad design to only have it available at short and irregular intervals. What about the players who sign up when the Coupon is not available?

Six years ago, when we had far fewer pay-only expansions it made sense to be stingy with that Coupon, as it covered a lot more of the total available content. But with the 7 expansion packs since then you are still left without a significant part of the most popular content in the game even if you are lucky enough to get the Coupon

The massive back log I am refering to is:

• DDO Expansion Trove (MotU, Shadowfell, Ravenloft)
• Sharn
• Feywild
• Saltmarsh
• Isle of Dread
• Vecna Unleashed
• Myth Drannor
• Chill of Ravenloft
• Terror of the Demogorgon

That is over $330 in the DDO market (or $250-$300 if you buy it with DDO points), which is hilariously overpriced for 20 year old game that also will nickel-and-dime you in every possible avenue. And what will the sum be 5-6 years down the line? Will there ever be a point where you would think it is too much?

I imagine that you will reply with "but its cheaper if you buy it when there are sales!", but that has the same issues as the temporary Coupon and more. First of all even with the deepest sales the total amount is still way too high. And what about the players that want to play old content that is not for sale at the moment? If they pay full price for an expansion that they know will be deeply discounted at another time will just leave a very sour taste, and for them to choose not to spend money on the game and instead "wait for a sale" is not only bad for the gamer but even worse for the game. It is a truly lose-lose situation.

Maybe you will say that ~$300, or what ever the point equivalent is, is nothing for the amount of "enjoyment" you get. That is easy to say for the initiated and someone who has been playing for a decade or more, but for a new player it is a ridiculous amount because they will compare it to other games.

Or maybe you will counter by saying that the high price tag is justified because, unlike typically in other MMO, most of the expansion content is always relevant, both due to the flat legendary "endgame" and the reincarnation process. But it is exactly that high relevance that is the problem. If you don't buy the content you will be "walled off" from a significant part of the game and therefor also the community.

Finally, you will perhaps say that no one is forced to buy anything. But that still misses the point. First of all we want players to want to spend money on the game. Secondly there is a big difference in the game you get to play if you pay vs if you dont pay. I know that I would never stick around in the free version of the current game nor would I pay that amount of money if I were a new player, and I think that it is reasonable that players like me should be part of the target audience among new players.

 

[VinoeWhines]

They should give VIP subscriptions to new players, a 15 day free trial and after, if they remain VIP for a year, can buy the expansions at 70% off for older content and 50% off for newer content.

This can give new players some time to evaluate if they want to "buy in" to the game and experience more of what it has to offer.

 

[VinoeWhines]

When I bought the box game back in the day from CompUSA it came with a free game code for Quests and used it and was joyful enough to run with a small group who had leveled their toons up to level 4-6 and zipped passed dungeons getting allot of XP and gear.
It wasn't till I started to venture on my own that I started to learn the game more then zerging to the end of dungeons with groups.

 

[MarauderX]

As someone who doesn't log more than 10 hours on DDO in any week of a year, I have a VIP account. It is more cost effective to have access to run elite+ when I want, provides enough points to reincarn whenever, and don't need to spend to remove limits.

 

[ftsforever]

didnt realise this was an airport where we needed to announce departures