SlipperyPete
Well-known member
SAVE MONSTER MANUAL
Petition to save monster manual
- Thread starter kmoustakas
- Start date
Sophie The Cat Burglar
Exotic Items Recovery Specialist
I think it was Puzzle Girl who specifically stated that adding new monsters to the Monster Manuals is a very time consuming task. The system was not designed at the start for easy expansion.
I would be okay with the following compromise: Reset the monster manual for every single character such that the weird problem for old European server characters is wiped out. To save developer time, do not add any more monsters to the manual. The Monster Manual system is now considered finished. Make a public statement to that effect, including a clause that any discussion containing a complaint about Monster Manual completion will be immediately removed. Any person complaining in that way will receive an automatic one month forum ban. No exceptions. It is over. Include a clause in the statement that says that maybe, some day, if there is time, the developers will attempt to rewrite the system to solve the easy expansion problem. This is not a promise; it is a hope. Any new Monster Manual Volume will include monsters to that moment in time and no more.
In my opinion, what I describe above is the easiest and most pragmatic solution to the problem. I would rather save 80% of a good thing than lose 100% of a good thing.
I would be okay with the following compromise: Reset the monster manual for every single character such that the weird problem for old European server characters is wiped out. To save developer time, do not add any more monsters to the manual. The Monster Manual system is now considered finished. Make a public statement to that effect, including a clause that any discussion containing a complaint about Monster Manual completion will be immediately removed. Any person complaining in that way will receive an automatic one month forum ban. No exceptions. It is over. Include a clause in the statement that says that maybe, some day, if there is time, the developers will attempt to rewrite the system to solve the easy expansion problem. This is not a promise; it is a hope. Any new Monster Manual Volume will include monsters to that moment in time and no more.
In my opinion, what I describe above is the easiest and most pragmatic solution to the problem. I would rather save 80% of a good thing than lose 100% of a good thing.
The issue with MM is it was designed like 15 years ago and under time crunch. The developer who made it was Max Nichols, who doesn't work for SSG and hasn't in a decade plus. It has received very few updates since then and the reason they've hinted at wanting to rework it is that it takes an outsized amount of dev time to maintain and update it with new content because every monster has to have a list of tags and strings to get them to count properly. New categories are supposedly even harder to make.
They're absolutely going to do *something* to it, you guys are going to have to come to terms with that. I doubt it will go away entirely, but this is a live-service game, there's absolutely zero guarantee that things will remain the same forever.
They're absolutely going to do *something* to it, you guys are going to have to come to terms with that. I doubt it will go away entirely, but this is a live-service game, there's absolutely zero guarantee that things will remain the same forever.
Fhrek
One Badge of Honor achieved
Unless is the Ladder.exe feature... it has endured since the dawn of DDO and wil remain the same 4evah.
kmoustakas
Scourge of Xaos
It's so bad, I have to click on the painting in 'cannith crystal' every life! Also I have to get all the explorers in korthos so the dragon appears in the mini map. It's bad I tell you!"I'm a hardcore flowersniffer..."
Okay, I love this. I also solo almost exclusively, and have for what? decades now, and sincerely enjoy the game, but never had a term that better-encapsulated my play style.
You already had my signature on the "Save the MM" petition, but this is just another level of good.
Thanks for the laugh Kmoustakas, made my day!
kmoustakas
Scourge of Xaos
Not true. A certain someone tried to fix ladder bug #1 but researched the problem poorly and every single ladder they fixed now has ladder bug #2. Sadly that's a problem with many good intentioned bug fixers in DDO ;( Unfortunatelly it's a case of don't hate the game, hate the player ;(
(History lesson: the ladder bug is that the floor bit and the ladder bit are two different bits and because of hand-drawn maps didn't connect in numerous places. The workaround was was jump on the ladder. The dev fix was to make the floor ladder part higher... making it so now if you JUMPED on the ladder you'd fall off because the bits STILL weren't connected. Which is terrible in places you have to JUMP on the ladder like acid pit trap in vecna...)
cdbd3rd
Well-known member
The Explorers, yes, of course.
The painting?? ... I think my official Casualers Union card just took a hit.
*runs off to sit by the gate waiting for the servers to open back up*
*a few moments later*
Okay, okay. A little anti-climatic, but now been there done that.
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In the last cycle of discussion the term "refactoring" came up. No one was sure what that meant (and "refactoring" might indeed have been selected for its ambiguity). This discussion might be important, if it heads off work being done such that it becomes too much of a sunk cost to cancel.
"Refactoring" seemed to be connected to an idea of pumping up conquest bonuses. This seemed to be at the cost of people who liked doing slayers, or liked exploring and finding rare creatures in remote corners. Those are legitimate sources of fun in this game (I have a guildie who is a returning player who loves doing this sort of thing).
"Refactoring" also seemed maybe motivated that some slayer targets are easier to get than when they were released, and that it is a problem that this is a good deal for the players. There are at least an equivalent number of things that are a bad deal for the players. I was surprised to see recently that the polar bears in Feywild don't count as bears. The warforged titans in Master Artificer raid (which are named as titans by Toven d'Cannith) have also never counted.
A lot of people get MMs free with VIP, but some people have actually bought these volumes, and they've never gotten what they paid for as far as warforged titans go.
Server transfers seem to have introduced some oddities with partial resets, with the Prologue not behaving the same way as other volumes. Some people were annoyed by the resets, but at least there was a benefit that rewards could be re-earned.
Whatever resources that would otherwise have gone into the changes should just go into making the current system work. Make polar bears bears and all the other edits on the known issues list.
There's clearly room for at least one more volume, we still don't have vampires, slaads, or dinosaurs.
What we have now is fun and everybody likes it. Please build on that instead of blowing it up.
"Refactoring" seemed to be connected to an idea of pumping up conquest bonuses. This seemed to be at the cost of people who liked doing slayers, or liked exploring and finding rare creatures in remote corners. Those are legitimate sources of fun in this game (I have a guildie who is a returning player who loves doing this sort of thing).
"Refactoring" also seemed maybe motivated that some slayer targets are easier to get than when they were released, and that it is a problem that this is a good deal for the players. There are at least an equivalent number of things that are a bad deal for the players. I was surprised to see recently that the polar bears in Feywild don't count as bears. The warforged titans in Master Artificer raid (which are named as titans by Toven d'Cannith) have also never counted.
A lot of people get MMs free with VIP, but some people have actually bought these volumes, and they've never gotten what they paid for as far as warforged titans go.
Server transfers seem to have introduced some oddities with partial resets, with the Prologue not behaving the same way as other volumes. Some people were annoyed by the resets, but at least there was a benefit that rewards could be re-earned.
Whatever resources that would otherwise have gone into the changes should just go into making the current system work. Make polar bears bears and all the other edits on the known issues list.
There's clearly room for at least one more volume, we still don't have vampires, slaads, or dinosaurs.
What we have now is fun and everybody likes it. Please build on that instead of blowing it up.
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An additional point: the Monster Manual can be a significant source of Remnants. Tampering with MM remnant-rewards during the Remnant Rush event seems beyond capricious. It is unfair for people who just needed 10 more glabrezus or something to cash in a reward. Any changes should certainly be put off until after Sterling's departure.
We're on Volume IX now. The MM started in the late MOTU era and Vol IX came out with Update 60 Vecna Unleashed. That's more than a "few" updates, but yes attention to it has been uneven.
I don't see how "it's too much work" needs to mean "a lot of work should be done on refactoring."
I don't think I know or can know whether fixing it is a harder task than rebuilding it, but I don't see how any non-devs would know that either.
cdbd3rd
Well-known member
Yeah, the term "refactoring" covers a lot of turf. After how they "refactored" VIP, it doesn't lend itself to offering a lot of hope.
Threads like this should just be considered icing on top of Dan's ongoing campaign to never let the MM be forgotten. So fixing/updating/expanding the MM isn't easy. Noted. If coding was easy, everyone would be doing it.
Jhenissa
Active member
If they retire it, they better refund my account. Nah! that wouldn't be fiscally responsible.
So it will deprecated to be pointless.
I've run that quests at least a 100 times and never noticed that once. Literally the first thing I did just now when logging in
Dandonk
Beater of Dead Horses
Yeah, the idea of SSG... "refactoring" is something that strikes terror into my very soul.*
* Debates are still ongoing if I have one, but hey..
Never give up! Never surrender!
Perhaps the Omega 13 can help? Hmm...
Well, I'm sure if we just gave them a few years, they could find time for it... oh wait... a few MORE yearsSo fixing/updating/expanding the MM isn't easy. Noted. If coding was easy, everyone would be doing it.
FaceDancer
Olde Wurm
I started to type something up and then I stopped. That's how the MM makes me feel right now.
Same! I then think, "that would look great on a wall if we had player housing." I doubt that's ever happening, but it's fun to dream.
kmoustakas
Scourge of Xaos
I kinda run a solo guild pretending it's player housing. I miss the old platinum amenities though, so cargo hold might be a good place to 'shelf' achievements or cosmetics
So I looked up what "refactoring" means as it was unfamiliar to me, and for software it seems to mean "re-engineering the code so that something operates better without changing the functionality for users." If it means that in the case of the Monster Manual I'm massively in favor and I'd think that would be very popular.
But in the context of how that term was raised originally, it felt to a lot of people, including me, that it meant trashing the rewards structure, and downing tools on remedial work on omissions and future updates. If it fact it means the first and not the second, a whole lot of people will be relieved and happy, so some official comment on that line would be really great to have.
But in the context of how that term was raised originally, it felt to a lot of people, including me, that it meant trashing the rewards structure, and downing tools on remedial work on omissions and future updates. If it fact it means the first and not the second, a whole lot of people will be relieved and happy, so some official comment on that line would be really great to have.