Concerns about DDO...

[DDO Gaming]

It is very apparent that most people left DDO, statistics shows its decline over the years.

the only statisics that matter are the ones on DDOAudit which show a stabilized number of gamers since 2020. We can safely extrapolate to previous years and assume those numbers have been consistent probably since 2016

 

[Buddha5440]

Sometimes I wonder if the reason why they don't invest in new equipment and servers is that they know the game is in terminal decline and it'll be shut off at some point.

I even often wonder if they have a tentative date already projected from the current player data on when that shut off is.

For being one of the Realms' most renown Mages...your Intelligence seems a bit lacking. I worry the tales of you exploits are the result of a Bard with far too much Charisma.

 

[Buddha5440]

the only statisics that matter are the ones on DDOAudit which show a stabilized number of gamers since 2020. We can safely extrapolate to previous years and assume those numbers have been consistent probably since 2016

Statistics are patently worthless. You can 'statistically' prove anything with the right sample.

 

[GoodDoc]

It honestly seems like to me that years and years of them doing things the cheapest and easiest way is starting to come back and bite them. Who would have thought??‍

 

[Blaster]

Old MMO games still in operation, all of them older than DDO, that manage to have working architecture without horrendous lag or excessive downtimes (In no particular order):

WOW
FFXI
Everquest
Everquest 2
Runescape
Dark Ages of Camelot
Ultima Online
Anarchy Online
Eve Online
MapleStory
Mabinogi
Lineage 2
Guild Wars
Perfect World


All these games have differences and unique aspects to them but all of them manage to do what, apparently, DDO cannot. Is DDO really so different and unique that it can't be compared to them fairly? I'm not a game designer or a professional software developer so I'm not going to try to deep dive into things I don't know about but nor am I going to let it shut down fair criticism either. As a consumer and customer, when I see that these games can have reasonable and smooth operations, some of them even the same parent company as DDO, I'm not interested in excuses or resigned lamentations on social media about DDO's plights.

If your equipment is crap, replace it. Just do it. Stop putting band-aids on a festering wound. We don't need countless entire days of downtime. Just bring them down, replace what needs to be replaced and don't bring it back up until it works. It's not like SSG isn't still making large profits, to say nothing for Daybreak's even deeper pockets. Fix what needs fixing and replace what needs replacing.

To me, this is just the other side of the coin of the in game performance situation. It appears as an outsider looking in to be an unwillingness to do what needs to be done to resolve the problem. Just to draw some contrast here, Everquest is set to release its 31st expansion this coming December which, I can guarantee, won't be just one raid and one wilderness zone. Granted, DDO quests are far more advanced than your standard go kill x of y mob and come back for a reward, but DDO expansions are still rather light when compared to other games in the genre at the same price point. And, just to rub salt in the wound, Everquest's 70 dollar collectors edition won't be required to play with all the new AAs and abilities instead of having to wait six months. Nor will you actually lose some of your character power during that period if you don't pay up... But that's another discussion so I'll bring it back on point.

Just like hardware maintenance, when it comes to continued development, the architecture of Everquest and the other games on the list who are still actively developing content for their customers doesn't seem to be a problem. To be fair, not all of them are still actively developing. FFXI, for example, has zero plans to release new expansions because they feel they have reached their limits. But look at all they were able to accomplish while managing to not have a laggy mess of a game and their maintenance windows are less than 2 hours. Take a cue from Square-Enix. If your game can't handle more expansions, stop making them.

TLDR: Less excuses, more results.

I can't speak for games outside of Daybreak/EG7's control, but from what I know of publicly released financial reports/presentations, DDO is the second lowest populated and money-making MMO/live service game under Daybreak, while Everquest on the other hand was the second highest populated/money-making game under Daybreak. EG7 owns the Everquest IP, unlike DDO where it's licensed. Thus Everquest is always going to be the priority for Daybreak/EG7 and will be alocated a larger staff, larger budget, and more resources.

EG7 wants to get away from third-party games and focus on first-party games, so games like DDO will only get enough money to continue to exist. DDO is a very predictable income earner for EG7 and they like that, but they're not going to spend money on it that they absolutely don't have to. Unfortunately this means while the infrastructure of DDO continues to crumble, SSG is only getting enough resorces to patch the fractures in it best they can rather than the resources needed to build a new infrastructure.

 

[mikarddo]

Statistics are patently worthless. You can 'statistically' prove anything with the right sample.

Thats a bold statement. Let me counter that a bit.

a) You cannot prove anything with inferential statistics, only show high/low probability.

b) The data from DDO Audit cannot reasonably be seen as a sample its more like the full data for the population (or damn close to it). So that rules out using inferential statistics and indeed any talk about samples.

c) Billions of billions of dollars are being spend every year on statistics and throughout the educational system much time and effort is being using teaching it - a tiny bit of that done by me. That seems a bit unlikely to happen if statistics are worthless.

d) AI is the hottest cake right now and the source of very impressive stock value increases. AI is... you probably guessed it... mostly statistics based on very large samples (training data and test data).

So, while it is certainly true that statistics can and will be misused I would be weary of anyone claiming it to be worthless and so would the shareholders of NVidia I am sure.

 

[Buddha5440]

Thats a bold statement. Let me counter that a bit.

a) You cannot prove anything with inferential statistics, only show high/low probability.

b) The data from DDO Audit cannot reasonably be seen as a sample its more like the full data for the population (or damn close to it). So that rules out using inferential statistics and indeed any talk about samples.

c) Billions of billions of dollars are being spend every year on statistics and throughout the educational system much time and effort is being using teaching it - a tiny bit of that done by me. That seems a bit unlikely to happen if statistics are worthless.

d) AI is the hottest cake right now and the source of very impressive stock value increases. AI is... you probably guessed it... mostly statistics based on very large samples (training data and test data).

So, while it is certainly true that statistics can and will be misused I would be weary of anyone claiming it to be worthless and so would the shareholders of NVidia I am sure.

a) That's why prove was in italics.
b) As far as you know.
c) Education system spends billions on whatever they want.
d) Ai is the FotM...much like Zoom during Covid.

 

[Dandonk]

With that much tenacity...your Con has to be somewhere around 130-140. You should try using the Club of the Holy Flame.

I'm a Throw Your Weight Around build

 

[The Nameless One]

Frankly, the amount of money we're putting down on this game qualifies us to knowing the long-term health of the game.

The amount of money and time we're all throwing around this game is becoming less and less "insert your quarter to play" and more "this is basically your 401k".

I think we deserve an audience with Severlin and at the least find out what he meant by that tweet.

 

[DDO Gaming]

Frankly, the amount of money we're putting down on this game qualifies us to knowing the long-term health of the game.

The amount of money and time we're all throwing around this game is becoming less and less "insert your quarter to play" and more "this is basically your 401k".

I think we deserve an audience with Severlin and at the least find out what he meant by that tweet.

frankly you are free to spend your money wherever you want. Severlin simply stated what is obvious...if you have ever worked in tech: tech becomes outdated and the older the tech, the more resources needed to keep it functional.

I have no idea what servers etc SSG uses to run DDO but servers typically have a 10 year lifespan before they need replacing. If server performance is contributing to lag then I guess the current servers were built maybe 2012 and should have been replaced in 2022

 

[PraetorPlato]

Frankly, the amount of money we're putting down on this game qualifies us to knowing the long-term health of the game.

The amount of money and time we're all throwing around this game is becoming less and less "insert your quarter to play" and more "this is basically your 401k".

I think we deserve an audience with Severlin and at the least find out what he meant by that tweet.

If you think you're paying too much, stop paying so much! Paying 401k-sized amounts sounds like a bad idea.

Also, I still don't understand why "we need to replace and upgrade very old hardware" is a bad omen for the game—replacing old hardware is what you do when you want your game to be healthy in the future, because you upgrade things you plan to keep using.

 

[avacdavison]

If you think you're paying too much, stop paying so much! Paying 401k-sized amounts sounds like a bad idea.

Also, I still don't understand why "we need to replace and upgrade very old hardware" is a bad omen for the game—replacing old hardware is what you do when you want your game to be healthy in the future, because you upgrade things you plan to keep using.

The concern is not that hardware has to be replaced - it's whether the parent or grandparent company will let them have the funds to do so.

 

[PraetorPlato]

The concern is not that hardware has to be replaced - it's whether the parent or grandparent company will let them have the funds to do so.

Given that they're currently doing it, and that we know DDO is highly profitable, I'm going to say yes! Again, long downtimes to upgrade hardware are indicative of a well-supported game, in the sense that if they didn't have the funds, or didn't expect the game to last, they wouldn't be upgrading the hardware.

 

[Jummby]

frankly you are free to spend your money wherever you want. Severlin simply stated what is obvious...if you have ever worked in tech: tech becomes outdated and the older the tech, the more resources needed to keep it functional.

I have no idea what servers etc SSG uses to run DDO but servers typically have a 10 year lifespan before they need replacing. If server performance is contributing to lag then I guess the current servers were built maybe 2012 and should have been replaced in 2022

If they want to continue changing people.for the game, the overpriced bells and whistles like super duper cosmo packs snd collector edition expansions, they need to spend some of the cash they take in from that, to upgrade servers.

 

[PraetorPlato]

Sounds like they're doing that!

 

[The Nameless One]

Sounds like they're doing that!

If they are upgrading the servers they need to tell us that.

I'm actually more interested right now on upgraded hardware and less lag than any piece of content they can possibly ever release.

 

[Jummby]

Sounds like they're doing that!

If they were doing that, rather than trying to figure out how to get outdated hardware to still work, Cordovan would spam and celebrate about all the hardware upgrades and investmets made to insure the future of the game.

We wouldn't be told stories such as: "this is quarterly/yearly maintenance".

Does anyone remember a quarterly or Yearly maintenance that required the DDO to be taken down every Wednesday, we after week?

 

[The Nameless One]

If they were upgrading hardware I would imagine Cord will personally driver over to the server farm and snap pics of the brand new DDO servers covered with fresh D&D decals and DDO stickers.

 

[Drunken.dx]

As some others stated, I suspect DDO is in same water as me.

For context, I work at company that makes furniture, at machine called Skipper 100.

that skipper is OLD, and few months back my supervisor admitted company is not gonna invest into it anymore, so now we wait for inevitable day when our mechanics will stop making miracles and it will finally die.

I suspect SSGis in same water where Daybreak is unwilling to invest in better servers so they make do with what they have,

 

[Jummby]

As some others stated, I suspect DDO is in same water as me.

For context, I work at company that makes furniture, at machine called Skipper 100.

that skipper is OLD, and few months back my supervisor admitted company is not gonna invest into it anymore, so now we wait for inevitable day when our mechanics will stop making miracles and it will finally die.

I suspect SSGis in same water where Daybreak is unwilling to invest in better servers so they make do with what they have,

Make sense. Daybreak Games is all.about milking old games.