Does Anyone Ever Use DDO to Substitute the Experience of a PnP Session as I think the Game may have Originally be Intended for?

[Bjond]

runs DDO as it was meant to be played (teamwork etc).

Small exception to the commentary on intention and backhanded insult for those being creative. However, I do agree with the overall theme: team play is fun and it's in very short supply in DDO. I only get it from DDO in two situations: R8+ and Raiding.

Even in those spots, it's not a certainty depending on the strength of the characters in the group. If the leader picks a difficulty a bit lower than the team's power, a mad steam-rolling zergball is born.

DDO has a bad chassis for a role playing

It can still happen. IIRC, there was a post on the old forums where a guy joined a party with a family (dad & kids). They guy promptly flipped into RP mode and voiced his character while playing. Apparently the kids LOVED it, but because he gave them ottos after (or something big like that), the followup was that SSG found him and banned him. 'Dunno veracity of any of it, but the take away for RP is that it can be orthogonal to game play.

Find some like-minded folk and y'all can play however you want.

---

The closest I ever saw to a server with lots of RP was back in EQ1 on Firona Vie. There were people there that literally lived and acted on their RP. Some of the most amazingly creative and disciplined RP folk I've seen. I'd do my best to reciprocate, but would rarely play in-character of my own accord; I'm kinda RP-Lite. Even with a server specifically for RP, it was still maybe only 30% in-character and mostly kept within and between RP-dedicated guilds.

 

[saekee]

Some years ago I won a copy of the Stormreach Campaign, a printed out DDO pnp book made by a dedicated player (Qijonn Dragonfist—Deadlock on old forums). He wrote out full dialogues and followed the DDO themes carefully, and used printed images from scenes of the game! I used this for an incarnation and it was a lot of fun. It is available as a pdf I think. Here is an article on it with links:

https://ddoplayers.com/2015/08/26/the-stormreach-campaign/

 

[Sturmbb]

Hey Sturm,

I didnt realize your gametime was preventing you from playing with us regularly, what time zone are you in lets see if we can put together a group in your slot of playtime.

The Narc

Hi Narc

My usual play time is about 9pm while 11pm GMT. To be honest, I am now playing other games at the moment and enjoying the break away from DDO. After the last Hardcore ended, i forced myself to play live for a few months and it just destroyed my fun for the game. I would say unless i was soloing, the session would end in disaster and i ended up getting frustrated as a multiple TR would join the party and ruin my fun. Don't get me wrong its not their fault they are going at 100 miles an hour to finish content. As they have XP pots on a timer. It's just a shame that the game loop now is TRing. I used to love playing before MOTUD launched as the level cap was 20 and the content was much more challenging and you could have lots of fun.

It's actually funny as i tried to alter my gameplay to allow for these multiple TR's by raising the reaper level quite high, but than nobody joined or the TR's that did join would complain saying their not comfortable playing at such a high level (which is funny as the level they wanted to play at, was me just watching them steam roll the content).

Playing solo is not an option, i did that about 8 years ago and i realized this game doesnt really hold a candle to other single player games you can play. Which is when i stopped playing. Hardcore actually brought me back to the game in 2019 and made me realize what i loved about it.

Hopefully Hardcore season ten will return next year.

 

[Sturmbb]

Small exception to the commentary on intention and backhanded insult for those being creative. However, I do agree with the overall theme: team play is fun and it's in very short supply in DDO. I only get it from DDO in two situations: R8+ and Raiding.

Even in those spots, it's not a certainty depending on the strength of the characters in the group. If the leader picks a difficulty a bit lower than the team's power, a mad steam-rolling zergball is born.



It can still happen. IIRC, there was a post on the old forums where a guy joined a party with a family (dad & kids). They guy promptly flipped into RP mode and voiced his character while playing. Apparently the kids LOVED it, but because he gave them ottos after (or something big like that), the followup was that SSG found him and banned him. 'Dunno veracity of any of it, but the take away for RP is that it can be orthogonal to game play.

Find some like-minded folk and y'all can play however you want.

---

The closest I ever saw to a server with lots of RP was back in EQ1 on Firona Vie. There were people there that literally lived and acted on their RP. Some of the most amazingly creative and disciplined RP folk I've seen. I'd do my best to reciprocate, but would rarely play in-character of my own accord; I'm kinda RP-Lite. Even with a server specifically for RP, it was still maybe only 30% in-character and mostly kept within and between RP-dedicated guilds.

It's really such a shame as this game really is great for playing as a team. The Content is great, the Leveling and character creation is probably the best i've ever come across (I used to love creating characters on Megatraveller). I think the biggest problem with this game is power creep and how it is now encouraged to run content as fast as possible (with XP pots running etc).

I would be super happy if they created a permanent server for Hardcore that got wiped every 2/3 months. Having played live for a few months this year, I now realize the biggest problem i have with live is the amount of power that players can accumulate with Tring and unless your running high reaper the content poses no threat to these players. The problem SSG have is they cannot raise the difficulty to accomodate these players as it would alienate new players or people like myself that do not TR. Also running high reaper is not as xp per minute effective for these players.

I don't think there will ever be a solution they can do on live to satisfy both non TR players and TR players. I know TR players hate hardcore as it takes away from the Live playerbase, but having played live and watched these players in quests. I am not sure why they want other people playing with them, They are quite capable of soloing the content on their own. So not sure why they complain when Hardcore season starts?

I think TR's and non TR's really do need their own servers now.

 

[Sturmbb]

Some years ago I won a copy of the Stormreach Campaign, a printed out DDO pnp book made by a dedicated player (Qijonn Dragonfist—Deadlock on old forums). He wrote out full dialogues and followed the DDO themes carefully, and used printed images from scenes of the game! I used this for an incarnation and it was a lot of fun. It is available as a pdf I think. Here is an article on it with links:

https://ddoplayers.com/2015/08/26/the-stormreach-campaign/

Wow this looks amazing, the person who did this, is really creative. Definitely going to read through all of this

Thank you for sharing

 

[The Narc]

Hi Narc

My usual play time is about 9pm while 11pm GMT. To be honest, I am now playing other games at the moment and enjoying the break away from DDO. After the last Hardcore ended, i forced myself to play live for a few months and it just destroyed my fun for the game. I would say unless i was soloing, the session would end in disaster and i ended up getting frustrated as a multiple TR would join the party and ruin my fun. Don't get me wrong its not their fault they are going at 100 miles an hour to finish content. As they have XP pots on a timer. It's just a shame that the game loop now is TRing. I used to love playing before MOTUD launched as the level cap was 20 and the content was much more challenging and you could have lots of fun.

It's actually funny as i tried to alter my gameplay to allow for these multiple TR's by raising the reaper level quite high, but than nobody joined or the TR's that did join would complain saying their not comfortable playing at such a high level (which is funny as the level they wanted to play at, was me just watching them steam roll the content).

Playing solo is not an option, i did that about 8 years ago and i realized this game doesnt really hold a candle to other single player games you can play. Which is when i stopped playing. Hardcore actually brought me back to the game in 2019 and made me realize what i loved about it.

Hopefully Hardcore season ten will return next year.

Little confused by the time you have listed, but 11 pm GMT is 7 PM EST, we often have players on at the time. And if you are up for having a late wednesday night(we run at 9 pm EST for 3 hours) you might enjoy the reaper 4 group it definitely pushes the players to work in a slow roll thru quests with a higher focus on group synergy.

 

[Enir]

OP
Yes, I play to keep the tabletop experience in my life. I enjoy reading the character dialog and DM script. The graphics are enough to give me the flavor of the game.
My job is such that I only have time for a couple dungeons at a time.
So, yes. I play DDO in place of PnP. Perhaps future events will enable me to join a local group in the years to come.

 

[Sturmbb]

Little confused by the time you have listed, but 11 pm GMT is 7 PM EST, we often have players on at the time. And if you are up for having a late wednesday night(we run at 9 pm EST for 3 hours) you might enjoy the reaper 4 group it definitely pushes the players to work in a slow roll thru quests with a higher focus on group synergy.

Hey Narc

11pm is when i finish ie turn my computer off and get ready for bed, due to work commitments and having to get up early in the morning.
Saturday is the only time when i can be a bit more flexible but sometimes im not online saturdays as i have RL stuff to do.

Thanks for responding, hope the guild is going well

 

[Br4d]

I don't think there will ever be a solution they can do on live to satisfy both non TR players and TR players. I know TR players hate hardcore as it takes away from the Live playerbase, but having played live and watched these players in quests. I am not sure why they want other people playing with them, They are quite capable of soloing the content on their own. So not sure why they complain when Hardcore season starts?

I think TR's and non TR's really do need their own servers now.

100%.

Casual server for VIP's. No transfers too. Limited TR's, maybe 2 per year. No Epic Destinies. No Reaper points (Reaper difficulty is fine but no power available there.) Full store.

The point is not that anybody could do this on any server but that having large numbers of players on the Reaper TR train completely bollixes the meta and group finder and such for casual players.

I'd even remove the ability to create private chat channels. Make the LFG window great again!

 

[rabidfox]

100%.

Casual server for VIP's. No transfers too. Limited TR's, maybe 2 per year. No Epic Destinies. No Reaper points (Reaper difficulty is fine but no power available there.) Full store.

The point is not that anybody could do this on any server but that having large numbers of players on the Reaper TR train completely bollixes the meta and group finder and such for casual players.

I'd even remove the ability to create private chat channels. Make the LFG window great again!

So separate the player base, lockout F2P/premium players from it, and limit the amount of things to do on there... what could go wrong?

 

[Br4d]

So separate the player base, lockout F2P/premium players from it, and limit the amount of things to do on there... what could go wrong?

The people who'd be interested in a casual server largely do not interact with the TR train crowd anyway.

It's not separating the player base. It's allowing the people who are already separated to go find a space to play in with similar players.

The new player issue is an issue but I don't think you can throw new players into a casual server by default without a lot of explanation and teaching involved.

 

[The Narc]

100%.

Casual server for VIP's. No transfers too. Limited TR's, maybe 2 per year. No Epic Destinies. No Reaper points (Reaper difficulty is fine but no power available there.) Full store.

The point is not that anybody could do this on any server but that having large numbers of players on the Reaper TR train completely bollixes the meta and group finder and such for casual players.

I'd even remove the ability to create private chat channels. Make the LFG window great again!

This wont work!

You are trying to limit things like TR’s and Reaper, but the biggest power creep of all is gear and you have left the store in, which would be a definite requirement for SSG, as obviously they think loot potential potions and loot rerolls are important to their income.

And if you are suggesting removing epic destinies while levelling in epics, why are you not suggesting removing all enhancements in heroics. I mean dont get me wrong i am a much bigger fan of heroic content than epic and legendary which truly do feel like treadmills, but to cherry pick which systems you would include and wouldnt to the point of removing epic destinies is literally removing the only advancement features for levels 20 to cap?

People would never be drawn to that and it would not have enough occupants to qualify for its own server.

 

[Sturmbb]

The people who'd be interested in a casual server largely do not interact with the TR train crowd anyway.

It's not separating the player base. It's allowing the people who are already separated to go find a space to play in with similar players.

The new player issue is an issue but I don't think you can throw new players into a casual server by default without a lot of explanation and teaching involved.

I do like your suggestions, but i think the easiest solution would be a permanent server that wipes every 3-6 months. Whether that is hardcore or a casual server. By Wiping frequently it would limit the amount of power creep you would get on the server. ie Multiple TR's and people with the best gear. Also people will be unwilling to pay for the top notch items in the store.

The only bad thing about this, is that SSG might end up losing money on the server, as people will be less iinclined to use the store.

I'm sure there will be a better suggestion than mine out there, but i really hope SSG can come up with something that appeals to the crowd that only play Hardcore. (Alot of people i play with on hardcore, never even touch live anymore).

I think SSG's biggest problem is maybe that the TR crowd spend the most money on this game. So they probably do not want to alienate the crowd that is keepiing the lights on. I really thought and believed, Hardcore was a great money maker for SSG, but with them announcing this year that Hardcore was taking a hiatus. I am having second thoughts on just how much money Hardcore was bringing in for SSG.

 

[The Narc]

I do like your suggestions, but i think the easiest solution would be a permanent server that wipes every 3-6 months. Whether that is hardcore or a casual server. By Wiping frequently it would limit the amount of power creep you would get on the server. ie Multiple TR's and people with the best gear. Also people will be unwilling to pay for the top notch items in the store.

The only bad thing about this, is that SSG might end up losing money on the server, as people will be less iinclined to use the store.

I'm sure there will be a better suggestion than mine out there, but i really hope SSG can come up with something that appeals to the crowd that only play Hardcore. (Alot of people i play with on hardcore, never even touch live anymore).

I think SSG's biggest problem is maybe that the TR crowd spend the most money on this game. So they probably do not want to alienate the crowd that is keepiing the lights on. I really thought and believed, Hardcore was a great money maker for SSG, but with them announcing this year that Hardcore was taking a hiatus. I am having second thoughts on just how much money Hardcore was bringing in for SSG.

Hardcore would bring even more money for them if they turned off expansion prepurchases for the hardcore server.

 

[Br4d]

I think SSG's biggest problem is maybe that the TR crowd spend the most money on this game. So they probably do not want to alienate the crowd that is keepiing the lights on. I really thought and believed, Hardcore was a great money maker for SSG, but with them announcing this year that Hardcore was taking a hiatus. I am having second thoughts on just how much money Hardcore was bringing in for SSG.

SSG's biggest problem right now relating to DDO is likely that most of the whales have finished the TR process and are not spending much. Everybody else has essentially had the quality of the game ruined by the combination of all the layers and the meta being skewed heavily towards the TR crowd and are mostly not inclined to spend much money.

The problem with the DDO business plan was always going to be the Methuselah's spending out and a pronounced inability on DDO's part to attract many new players to replenish the whale pool.

 

[Bjond]

a pronounced inability on DDO's part to attract many new players to replenish the whale pool.

This would actually make a good quest .. help Green-Pieces, the wood-elf, "save the whales!" from drow (lead by Sinister-Sister Grump), who are trying to milk them (whale-milk being an aphrodisiac much prized by gnomes).

---

BTW, it's a reasonable assessment. For my own part, I'll literally NEVER do racial or heroic TRs because I hate the L1-20 play -- you can't even play your build until close to L20. Otto's are even worse because then you're not even playing and yet still forced endlessly repeat the worst UI mess in the game: TR banking & cache.

If they want me to spend, gimme a single button to press that buys a racial or heroic TR. No futzing about in game with the cache. Just "pop", here's your PL. Others might like similar buttons for RXP or EPLs, but I like that play and thus do not want to shortcut those.

(what I really want will never happen: rip out L1-20, give every char full racial & heroic PLs, and start all play at L20)

 

[The Narc]

This would actually make a good quest .. help Green-Pieces, the wood-elf, "save the whales!" from drow (lead by Sinister-Sister Grump), who are trying to milk them (whale-milk being an aphrodisiac much prized by gnomes).

---

BTW, it's a reasonable assessment. For my own part, I'll literally NEVER do racial or heroic TRs because I hate the L1-20 play -- you can't even play your build until close to L20. Otto's are even worse because then you're not even playing and yet still forced endlessly repeat the worst UI mess in the game: TR banking & cache.

If they want me to spend, gimme a single button to press that buys a racial or heroic TR. No futzing about in game with the cache. Just "pop", here's your PL. Others might like similar buttons for RXP or EPLs, but I like that play and thus do not want to shortcut those.

(what I really want will never happen: rip out L1-20, give every char full racial & heroic PLs, and start all play at L20)

Wont happen because there is a whole group of people who prefer heroic questing over epic and legendary endgame farming, people who have resisted every effort by SSG to try and encourage us towards endgame such as the double reaper xp rewarded in legendary or level locking out epic destinies to try and make epic levels better at higher levels. As a counterpoint to yours we dont like endless farming for snipes of power and meat sack bosses we can whack at for a 30-60 seconds.

(what i really want is for them to remove epic and legendary or atleast make everything at those 100x more grindy so the whales can invest more hard cash for snippets of power) (the cursed cards were perfect except for one thing, all should be bound so that there is no profit in duping and track loot pulls and catch the dupers and permanently ban them, unless they forfeit over a hefty cash fine with a promise of no future duping - suggesting $10000 US and if they dont pay publicly announce their name to all players on the forums so we know who these losers are)

 

[Driaza]

To OP - no its not a substitute for table top for me

With regards speed just state on your LFM the type of group you are looking for

Personally i have been playing for almost 2 decades (with some breaks) and i only have an hour or 2 every few days to play nowadays due to well you know ... life

So when i play i tend to play fast (though i am in no ways the fastest and very often i am stuggling to keep up with the real zergers!)

But for me the fun is getting as much crammed into the time i have

With new stuff i am ok to take it slow but with stuff thats been done to death it is very much a case of meep meep!

 

[Fizban]

Does Anyone Ever Use DDO to Substitute the Experience of a PnP Session as I think the Game may have Originally be Intended for?

Yes, 100%. I've been playing 18 plus years and always incorporate D&D style role playing in how I build and play my characters. It's the main reason I still play and love the game. It is also why I keep pushing SSG to stay as close to the D&D ruleset(s) and content as possible for an MMO.

 

[Sturmbb]

This would actually make a good quest .. help Green-Pieces, the wood-elf, "save the whales!" from drow (lead by Sinister-Sister Grump), who are trying to milk them (whale-milk being an aphrodisiac much prized by gnomes).

---

BTW, it's a reasonable assessment. For my own part, I'll literally NEVER do racial or heroic TRs because I hate the L1-20 play -- you can't even play your build until close to L20. Otto's are even worse because then you're not even playing and yet still forced endlessly repeat the worst UI mess in the game: TR banking & cache.

If they want me to spend, gimme a single button to press that buys a racial or heroic TR. No futzing about in game with the cache. Just "pop", here's your PL. Others might like similar buttons for RXP or EPLs, but I like that play and thus do not want to shortcut those.

(what I really want will never happen: rip out L1-20, give every char full racial & heroic PLs, and start all play at L20)

To be honest, for me, It still wouldnt give me any incentive to TR. When Hardcore Ended and i decided to start playing Live, i toyed around with the idea of getting on the TR train. As the catch phrase goes "if you can't beat them join them". So i got my toon leveled up to 32 and decided before TRing i would level an alt. so i could keep one at cap for raids etc (which i must admit are fun on live). But while leveling i had the pleasure of running with numerous TR's who was stomping all of the content.

Than i had an epithany. If i wasnt enjoying playing while a TR was in the party, as they were stomping through the content. There is no way i would actually enjoy being a TR and stomping through the content. Also i believe it would of impacted my ability to play on Hardcore. Which i thoroughly enjoy.

My thinking is if i get a TR powerful on live and find no challenge on DDO, when i go back to a first life on Hardcore i would struggle and have to adapt. I've heard numerous people have this problem when they go from their Ultra TR powerful live toon to a first life hardcore player.