A word of introduction. By nature I am a calm person with a large dose of humility and patience. However, what you are doing goes beyond my understanding of these words. You write and upload update after update, not giving a damn about what happens in the game. Although a good word or constructive criticism is not lacking here either. With the forum I am not up to date, so perhaps something will repeat, but the more it repeats, the greater the chance that you will pick up on it. And I've found out more than once that repetition makes sense - I once suggested several times that the former EDF should also give a bonus to HP from the Shield Mastery feat and that you should also add Greater. Seemingly it was ignored but eventually it came up. And I don't take credit for it, I don't think there's any correlation here, however, it's nice to see it come up. I will not care about the opinion of the players. I'm presenting my point of view and roughly the people from the guild with whom I often discuss these topics or what conversations I'll pick up more than once in the game chats while waiting for players, in the guild or in the in-game channels. And my memory is good, I've been preparing for this for a long time and collecting .... various situations. English is not my native language but I think it will be understandable. But to the point. Tl;dr - point 9
Thank you for your attention.
- Bugs in the game.
Ladder bug when jumping on them, you used to write in every other patch that you would fix it, and it still does not work as it should. Or maybe the problem of the error is not in the ladders but in the jumping itself and the lag associated with it? Especially this can be seen when trying to jump out of the water, where you can even hear the sound of a double splash, but not much happens on the screen. Yes you are very quick to remove bugs that make life easier for players. From the (very)old when scrolls for epic items flew in epic chests with Red Fens, from the fact that shards could be put through a Large Ingredient Bag... Well, after all, it's a bug/exploit and/or that's not allowed! But what makes it more difficult is not because what's the point, after all players play and pay anyway and you have a reason to be happy so what do you care. When after update 13 scrolls only flew from Web of Chaos and from other epics they didn't fly, you were agonizing about it for 2-3 weeks, but when something needs to be made more difficult you deal with it right away. Ok, past. In Shroud in the first stage at the portal 11 or 9 depending on the server there is a rock block, where there was a graphic error and it was possible to jump up to half the height of this block in the corner on a vertical wall, this made it much faster and easier to pass between portals, but after all it was a bug, players do not like bugs so you removed it and now you have to ram through spikes or run around. What nonsense. This was also one of the older bugs, you guys suddenly remembered? Or the recent one where Stone Giant doesn't walk normally through the GH just jumps around. Or when some race doesn't perform /dance2 animation correctly so you guys fix it. There really are more important things to fix. You only deal with the easy stuff. Masses of other graphical, such as the fact that through campfires(such as in Bounty Hunter) it is impossible to pass, arrow and spell are also blocked, well unless the mobs, but it is possible to jump on them(not sure why) you do not fix, because you do not. Full of curbs that you can't pass through... because you don't. Only when you release the movement key does the character take a step forward thereby stepping on it. This is notorious with the fountain on the Marketplace - H. Cannith road, with the thresholds/stairs in VoN5 and full of other places. You take care of the nitty-gritty instead of fixing what is more important. Full of minor bugs, which this clustered irritate players. Are you making us angry? What do you get out of it?
I remember after MotU came out and the adventure ending raid, a dozen players got bogged down towards the end and waited for your help for several hours(including my former guild leader). Then it turned out that CitW bugs when you talk to Lolth. So your fix then came down to issuing a message not to talk to her because it causes an error.... The boss is called Lolth and what you did deserves the comment "Lol". It's like on a road with potholes instead of patching the potholes you would put up a warning sign - damaged pavement. This is what your problem solving often looks like.
Because of your exploits, players also lose. Those who benefited from the fact that you could make yourself a million copies of what fits in various bags have benefited. But others have lost out more. Why? Well, for example, the popular Shroud. Once several times a day on LFM now 1 max 2 times. Because everyone has what they wanted they don't go. But to carry 2 items you need at least 20th and that's a achievement today. You could already add Essence of Cleansing to the drop as a reward for doing elite diff(now anyway shroud is often done at level for xp and not for ingredients so it's done at elite for bravery) or at least to the store like Yellow Dopant you added.
- Deterioration, Hirelings, Spells...
In my guild when we see that the next day there will be a server down for Maintenance/hotfix we make bets on what you will botch again. Hirelings are a theme, because we often do quests with them for DW or just to stand still, not getting hit and heal or defend some NPC. You always mess something up for them, recently you managed to make it so that a hireling set on passive was probably even more active than on active... And those that should gathers aggro - ftr, brb, even on attack are passive. And summoning to myself to reset him makes it so that after summoning he won't heal as we have little hp, but will cast Nimbus from wand. Nonsense. Half of the healers have Quicken, Empower Healing, etc. but you can't turn it on/off. They also have other spells.... but instead they have the ability to turn it on/off to use ethernal wand(which can gather aggro better than some tank and at a shot).... Which by the way has not worked for a long time. You can turn off what they are supposed to use or not, close the window - without asking for approval - then open it again with the same settings as if you just summoned them. And the skills they don't have on command from the bar... they can take off, for example, Curse, the anti-healing one, but not themselves, which results in them healing themselves until they run out of sp. And bards are obsolete, they can play songs that can no longer be played by a bard separately - such as Ironskin Chant, or they have a displacement spell on their hotbar. If memory serves me right this spell can only be cast on yourself probably from up14
With poisons and diseases is that supposedly natural/not natural, but still beloved roll 1 will make the debuff work. Paladin from 2lvl is by definition class feat immune to natural, magical and supernatural disease, yet he gets on VoN5 Necrotic Touch(from zombie disease supernatural) and -10 CON. Recently I saw on Small Problem how the enchanted spider attacked the earth elemental with poison... Have you ever seen a poisoned rock? Because I haven't, but in DDO it's possible. Ah yes, it's too easy for players, and a good portion of the pay for this or that so you have to make things harder(that was irony). Such an excerpt from a conversation I'll paste, I had a laugh at it, and it shows what kind of attitude players have towards your.... "improvements."
(UserChat1): [channel] #Player 1#: 'Helm of Freewill beatz any non-epic helm i think:S'.
(UserChat1): [channel] #Player 2#: 'soon fear immunity will not make you immune to magical fear, and fear traps will do damage'.
(UserChat1): [channel] #Player 1#: 'lol im almsot certain ur quoting next update list^^.
Dispell-kind spells are basically useless. Mob can dispell anything to us, they tend to have a large CL, especially on high difficulty levels when the mob's CR exceeds ours sometimes 2x and thus making it impossible to remove their debuffs. I'm not even talking about the dispell itself. Break enchantment is practically useless, only on aoe spells. Song of Freedom actually too because it is not clear why it uses CL bard and not Perform
When entering some raids the Gianthold Tor loading screen appears. If that's the case then make it easier for players not to have to walk, make the entrances to all raids from the entrance to GH Tor and players will just choose what to go to, after all it will be simpler that way since the loading screen is one anyway and also players won't ask where to go. Yes, a fuss, but combined it gives player frustrations.
You add cool features, unique and a few patches later you nerf them. That's what happened for example with Mortal Fear, since it turned out that legendary ward monsters are immune to percentage hp taking(by the way, why you can't put Sentient into a fully completed tier 3 weapon with thunderforged or LGS? If you can't take it apart or change it, its finished. I don't understand). The spell "probe" you have destroyed. I am referring to sonic blast. What bothered you after 15 years of playing that it is an aoe spell? I called it probe because more than once it was used for that - to shoot ahead and see if some invisible creature has a save. Or to smash breakable through a closed lattice because just those two are missing to ransack bonus of 15%.
Daily Dice. Some rolls cool, others pointless, especially in VIP. Fact, you can get a lot of XP but that's not the point and it's not even susceptible to XP bonuses like the rewards for Sagas. Daily Dice, as a successor to the old lottery from the store where players signed up to get something and more than once got it - I myself got some ingredients for tier2 Green Steel that way - it would be cool to get something useful. And there is a lot of it. Some people trade it, others collect sometimes you will use something - I got Siberys Cake more than once. Turbo small chance to get Astral Shards, but it's some chance. On the other hand, these tomes are one of the worse things. Not only are they all upgrades, they're also BtA. What's it to me that I get Spot +2 -> +3 when I don't even have +1 on the character? And why the hell is this BtA? I would sell such a book to someone who needs it but there is no way. Neither I will use it nor someone. 100 and 200xp is also a bit of a mockery, instead of that just some craft ingredients would be better. And please do away with that annoying confirmation pop-up when using xp from daily dice. When I've freshly picked up level e.g. 20 and got 300xp in it, really the message that using this will give me enough xp to reach the next level is pointless and only gets in the way.
The Monk class is nerfed from time to time - for what? Warlock also recently got nerfed. You create new classes, or new trees that are OP at first and then nerf them to adapt them to the rest. Double the work, working on the same thing twice, in time that you could have spent on something more useful. And players will buy or unlock it anyway because they want to try something new or score another past life. So it's just a cheap marketing ploy. Manyshot was nerfed because it causes lag. For X years of game time it did not cause, but suddenly a consortium got together and ruled. Manyshot is broken, the lags continue. It's a bit like in a car that smothers with exhaust fumes too much, you replaced the light bulb because it heats up too much and that's probably what caused it. The bulb is new, inferior and the car continues to tar, but you are happy because you have done something useless. The titanic work was done.
- The downfall?
A lot of old players left after you showed them the middle finger in the form of MotU, among other things(among other reasons, because what they worked for months for - scroll/seale/shard folding items - could be found in random loot and other changes e.g. AC). But okay, let's leave MotU... for now. You continue to make some changes by which older players give up because they are simply fed up. And I'm talking about those who play regularly. Not those who, from senstiment, once a week log on for an hour, play and then real life calls them and again they are gone for some time. But even these players can often be reminded for an hour why they don't play more often. Because of this, the community in this game is also lost. And there are no new players, especially among the younger ages. The competition is so strong that hardly anyone cares about a refreshed game from the first decade of this century. You make many changes to attract newcomers(mounts, housing mentioned somewhere more than once, etc.), but often at the expense of those who still faithfully play, and it's mostly them, those older players(I remember how on Twitch someone wrote that he would prefer that instead of a mount, in front of the player would go a character and hit with coconuts, to which Cordovan wrote that "me too"). But the new ones aren't there. He'll install one - if at all because there are a lot of impediments like the ever-necessary DX9, Framework 3.5 or MS silverlight(and I measured myself against this recently wanting to install DDO on a borrowed laptop for a vacation trip) - he'll play for a day, maybe two and get bored or annoyed and go elsewhere, MMOs are not in lack on the web. By the huge deficit of, let's call it, middle class, a certain gap is created. The new players are quite weak, inexperienced, unfamiliar with the game and the older ones have so many pl/rpl/epl that they rarely want to help the new ones because they have a completely different pace of play. Thus, these newcomers have no opportunity to catch up with the older ones. An middle class is one that has been playing for a while and has learned the game, but doesn't yet have enough past lives to stand out from the beginners. This also discourages new players who are quickly able to notice it. And the only "new" players that there are are those who have not gone to raids before and just happen to like it or have time for it, so they are not very associated by the rest. And raid groups are often quite hermetic in terms of composition - there is a certain group of players who like to go to raids and they more or less often attend them. The other group includes the kind I described above - once a week, an hour or two. All the balance changes and supposedly improvements make the game more and more a single player game because everyone 90% of what they need is done by themselves because they can and it's made easier, and the drop rate whether in the PT or the same hopeless. Take, for example, such epic levels. How does it make sense that, for example, a wizard gets the same BAB as a fighter, the same defense throws, the same hp and melee power instead of more spell point, caster lvl. I'm talking about epic lvl, not ED. On these old players I think you lost a lot. And a lot has left, you can see for example from LFM, from instances, or from the fact that there are rumors among players about merging servers. And that would also be good, such a Megaserver. The game would come alive, players would start to reintegrate, get to know each other, the mass of abandoned accounts would disappear, or characters from such that can only be found by adding to the friends list, level have 1 or lower(yes, created a character and not even left Shipwreck Shore) and only occupy the name of the character. But you guys seem to be counting only cash and in the short term, not looking at what would bring tangible benefits. It used to be possible not to enter the game because the server was full, which was annoying in case of getting DC on a raid. And now there is no such thing. And do not pull the wool over our eyes with the fact that you have moved to better servers because it is easy to feel that this is not the case. And LFM... without loading the WHO list actually doesn't work. You don't fix that, and one could at least get around it by making the Social panel open directly on the WHO tab. More than once a raid escaped me like that, because there was still a lot of space so I didn't book, I log on to another character and the group is already full because by the time WHO loaded, by the time I joined the group the group leader had already chosen someone else. "(Error): The chat server is temporarily unavailable" - by such a message after logging in the WHO list can not find a player - and so the group leader can not accept either. In the friend list shows such a player as offline and the only way to accept into the group is to stand next to it and manually select, mark and invite. Because the command /invite: also does not work then.
And above all, you have changed the main content of the game and are trying to adapt to something new...I get the impression that you yourselves do not know to what, and I think that a large part of the players do not know either. The game used to focus on small numbers, small instances. And since just MotU there has been some kind of upheaval and the bigger the more useless spaces the better. This can be seen very much in the wildneresses, for example, such a King Forrest - beautiful, cool music, but for these inches of acreage only 3quests, 40 encouter which it is practically impossible to complete... Or Hall of Heroes - a huge hall is not known for what. To make a place for reincarnation(which already had its place)? Since you took the quests for Gatekeeper from there the more there is almost nothing left there. Everything that is there is elsewhere too, or could be(NPCs from Mimic and Risia event, reaper rewards and from Hardcore), so why such a big one? And something that could be the center of the place - a teleport between Eberron and Faerun, or could between other large sub-worlds(Barovia, Sharn), is out of the way and payable. And it could be an integral part of HoH. Another issue is a certain way of forcing players how to play, through items, sets, changes associated with them. Sentient - very cool but forces you to play with only one weapon. The more so that conquering, especially higher, lvl sentient is so horrendously expensive and time-consuming that few players can afford two weapons, and if they do, they have, for example, one for 20+ and another for 30+, and in melee characters several weapons are useful or rather... were useful. In casters you force the use of 1-2 elements because you usually find so much on most weapons. And if something gives to the overall is little, for example the difference between spell lore and elemental lore is almost 2x(12 spell lore and 23 specific element lore). And what about other caster? Negative is not elemental... well yes but about that later, there is less resistance to light, sound or force but force is also untyped, it is useful for other spells(By the way - Horrid Wilting supposedly draws from Negative Energy and from Necromancy but there is an untyped icon next to the damage, the spell description does not say, the combat log does not say what dmg it is either). What about those who do not want to focus only on one element? A new add-on appears and already new directives, one would like to say. It's a bit like when you're releasing an expansion you're telling us - oh and in this expansion you're going to use acid and cold because that's what the mobs will be a bit more susceptible to, so you'll need that. We think that's the case - So mind you. The enitre game doesn't just focus on this one expansion that you're releasing or this one raid that crowns this expansion. Players go to different raids, play different quests and go with different characters and builds, and you kind of force things. You want to have a good one then farm named, maybe you'll end up getting one but less useful overall, and if you want to have one like you want but much worse then the named welcome to cannith craft or random loot. This also introduces imbalance in the game. Players don't want it imposed on them, and the more you impose the more they try to get around it and play their own way so you end up just making it harder. In conclusion - you make it difficult for players how they want to play
You are very far from the competition and that is where players leave after your offenses such as not fixing bugs. A large part of the players, those I know from two servers, play more out of sentiment, because the graphics no longer impress(those notorious items from breakables falling under the texture, or chests from champions), servers are sometimes shut down just like that, because something breaks on one of them... I remember once on Ghallanda broke down Harbor. It was impossible to enter, teleport there, or to indirectly adjacent instances. Such as Inspire Quarter, or even Reavers Reach - because coming back from there you land in Harbor. So, after time, you shut down all of Ghallanda until it is repaired. You're putting a hurdle in your own way. And already a shot in the knee was how you fired people who worked for you(see for example here: http://www.mmobomb.com/news/ex-lotro-dev-dishes-turbines-missteps/ oops) and most likely because of that you yourselves don't understand what is going on, because those who still could know something don't work, but... I don't want to interfere... I could write something myself - not only from myself, for example, about Severlin and his influence on the game, but I will refrain from uncensored words. And in part I care little, I just want to play peacefully without worrying about bugs.
- Feat & Enhancement.
Enhancements from which this some class tree from time to time get a refresh.... Some successful, the fact to some you have to get used to, but some are already bugged or are a total failure. Iron Stomach in a dwarf... I upgraded this to rank II and one time I was on ToD I gulped Curse Removal Potion, according to this Iron Stomach I got Remove Disease and Remove Poison(spells!) for 2 min. It wasn't 5sec when I got Poison and Disease from Shadowmaster(Nythirios). Henshin Mystic tree, Balance in Dawn -> Every Light Casts a Shadow skill. Seemed like a great thing. It proclaims: "On Damage: Target suffers 1d4 Negative Levels. If the target dies within 10 seconds, all nearby enemies suffer 1d2 Negative Levels." Great, except that the 2 negative lvl also got all the players around who don't have DW or lvl drain immunity. I admit it's been a long time since I've seen this, so I'm not sure if it's further broken or just unused/undeveloped. These and a ton of others I haven't picked up yet.
Fighter Kensai. Why the hell are you guys making a monk out of a fighter by force. No other class prestige is as inter-class as Kensai! Concentration additions, Max Dex Bonus increase, Dodge and Armor check penalty decrease cool, but only in light armor or no armor? For a warrior who wears heavy armor to maximize PRR do you give to light armor? Of the stats is STR, DEX and WIS? What were you guys smoking while coming up with this? Since when does Fighter Kensai run around naked or in light armor? Since when does a Fighter need WIS for anything other than will save? Ah well, wisdom is needed for Shattering Strike, which has a DC with WIS. Dang, a DC with WIS in a fighter on the force? This is a fighter, not a monk. This Shattering Strike doesn't even work on a deck dummy(Training Dummy) let alone on mobs. One With The Blade - what the heck is this? Because I had it for a while and didn't notice any special effects. Or maybe it's because I have as much as 30(as much as CON mod) concentration, well yes, because it's strange that as a warrior with 2pts per lvl to give away in this with non-class concentration I have so little of it. Oh and maybe it's because as a warrior I prefer to go in Legendary Dreadnought ED than in Grandmaster of Flowers which gives me nothing. A class that should be a weapon master, specifically one developed, is probably the weakest axe-wielder currently. And this is in the name of pairing with a monk by force.
Magus of the Eclipse - this is a bit of an example of making ED for a particular style of play and a bit of an attempt to force players how to play. A tree that supports a sort of palemaster, although there are already a lot of additions to negative Energy in Draconic Incarnation. If someone wants to create a classic arcane wizard then this tree does not help him. More helpful is Shiradi Champion or even Shadowdancer. A lot of additions for negative and cold energy and for the rest, or even basic Force is almost non-existent. And playing with palemaster is cumbersome because a lot of mobs have deathward on them or cast deathward very fast(I wrote about dispel effectiveness above). And PM has nothing like Elemental Savant that it will take off immunity or invulnerability with the first spell. In PM it only works on undead in Sorc on all. But after all, this too could be easily solved - Death Mark Curse - what Wights cast in Barovia and in Strahd Castle. It takes out the DW and prevents it from being cast again for a few seconds. Let it have its own internal cooldown and let it work only with SLA PMs and Death Auras. And it will already make the PM more useful. And one more helpful thing. Heal Skill. Both negative and positive spell power have an allowance from this skill. Since clerics can support themselves with this and it's always a few points more, why not palemaster wizard? If you don't want to make this class skill for Wizard then maybe some enhancement that makes it will, or feat? Or let it be for the wizard PM in the tree that the negative energy bonus takes from Spellcraft instead of Heal? I remember once Palemasters on a given server would make an appointment and go in 12 to raid. That's how they managed to do a difficult ToD on Elite at the time, and I think it was sometime just before the first introduction of ED. Today that might not work. Magus even only got the ability to raise DC Enchantment spells for themselves after time. The only things he has that are more versatile are Grand Summoner, Impregnable Mind, Lunar insight, Partial eclipse and Piercing Spellcraft, but they are scattered around the tree enough that it makes more sense to invest in another tree that gives similar traits and just give up a few. This is not an ED that would be an epic sequel to Archmage , and the former Magister was such.
You created Tabaxi and Tabaxi Trailblazer which has enhancements for quarterstaff combat. Why isn't there an option for the attack and dmg from the staff to be derived from DEX when it is higher than STR? Elves have something like that for weapons, dwarves similarly only that from CON, PDK has STR/CHA and that's already in tier1. Though in general I think q-staff is more of a weapon for dex and so it was in classic D&D(from what I remember they were treated like two weapons combined because you can hit with both ends of the stick). Because characters using dex and q-staff are forced to give up THF and Power Attack which requires strength, and they usually have quite few feats to take another one that would change that so I don't know if a new feat for that is a good idea. More likely an extension of some current one, Swords to Plowshares or Weapon Finesse or something along those lines. So it would even fit a gnome fighter who instead of going into great axes wants to go into quarterstaffs.
City Regeneration and Blessing of the Silver Flame. They are a bit outdated now, aren't they? 1hp/5sp or 4hp/8sp is a bit low. It was good in the days before MotU, when characters with low HP dice had up to 500hp and those with higher HP dice rarely had up to 1k hp, and SP ranged between 1.5k and 3k depending on the caster. Maybe it would be a good idea to raise these values 4-5 times? 5hp/20sp for 6sec base and 10hp/40sp for 6sec with Blessing. By the way, for some time now the only tavern in H. Kundarak doesn't have Tavern Regeneration and all sorts of uses in it don't regenerate.
- Monster Manual.
Another cool thing you guys did, seriously. It's such a bit of an unformal achievment system. More than once I see players specifically killing a particular monster, or an optional orange-named one just to get it into Hunter. Especially when you used to get TP and not that ridiculous number of astral shards for more Exterminators - although sometimes that's the only way to get astral shards without buying them for TP. But here, too, there is something to cling to. Do you manually count these mobs? Do you go into each Q and write down on a piece of paper and then add up with a calculator? Looking at e.g. hopgoblins or spiders you don't, but e.g. on Flesh Golems(after just two quests you can unlock most of them), Midflayers or Hezrou or Horned Devils which are very few in the game they are, or after those which should have been there for a long time and you added only recently(fire reavers/gigants). And Titans I don't know.... for the sake of fooling around you guys added them there. And I think you would have done the fair thing if you had put there first all the mobs that appear in F2P quests and appear in some significant amount. And there are a lot of them. From Animal Psy! Although a good portion of them are Magical Beast. However, they are still missing. Giants separated and are Hill, Fire Gigant just added, and the others? Stone, Cloud, Frost too, although I admit that there are not many of them in F2P Quests. You gave from Outsiders Marilith of which there are as many as fingers in one hand, Horned Devils - but what about Pit Fiend? Jarilith - there are many more of these. To the Outsiders still Hag is missing and it would probably be a set. And there are Yugoloth which regularly appear probably only in the journeys in the Extraplanar Palace instance. Undead? You recently added easily countable Quells and Wheeps and Spectres are what? They occur in every 3 quests especially at low lvl. Most of them(mentioned above) occur in quests/wildneresses. You should get them in the first place and all these mobs should be in the next Monser Manual vol 10. In the Contrary MM loses a bit of sense, because mainly the frequent ones should appear. From Heart of Madness, and a bit in Faerun too, Medusa's Mostrous Humanoid appear more frequently. Recently also Bullywug, and what about Wildman? They still appear in several older quests, including the free Ataraxia. More expansions make mobs once rare become common - Insect, Crayfish from Vermin. Lizardfolk as humanoids, Kelpie, Sea Lion.... Will o'wispy as an aberration - also quite an old creature. And despite the fact that lately you release a new MM with an addition, these becoming frequent somehow do not appear very much, if only to encourage those undecided to buy expansions. And with a gesture like John Travolta from Pulp Fiction, I ask - where is it?
- Items, Drop Rate, Currency.
This new, supposedly improved random loot according to many players I have talked to is unintuitive. The old, older names were clear, more obvious. Seeing the name of the item itself, one knew if it added fire damage, spell power for fire spells or fire defense, or maybe a trap disarming accessory. Now actually without reading the description there is no such certainty. In addition, there are so many names that it is difficult to remember. Sometimes you would like to even buy an item on AH, but first you have to flip through half of AH to find out what this feature, prefix/suffix in the item is even called. Well, but maybe I rotate in a narrow circle of players and my observation is more subjective.
When will the revmap of items from Faerun? I'm thinking here mainly of MotU, Shadowfell, Druid Deep and Highroad of Shadows. After you have improved - finally! - items from the old epics those from these packs stand out strongly from them and ML have higher. Quite a few items are there with the potential to be cool which would only need to be updated a bit, maybe minimally add something - similar to what you did with the Red Fens items, for example. I think that not one warrior would hug a sword that can be taken outside the quest - Earthcarver, or not one caster Holy Symbol of Lolth slightly improved. And while we're on the subject of improvement. Maybe, since these items have to be assembled and can't be found, in Altar of Epic rituals add the possibility to add Mythic bonuses to them? With the revmap, maybe it's also time to update the once cool dragontouched armor system. Partially interacting with items from heroic VoN and HoX. Likewise the sets from Devils of Shavarath. The sets themselves often gave interesting bonuses but also need a refresh because the 10lvl items are already beating them.The same with improving starter gear for veteran statuses and iconics. You improved the items from Necro4 then when you did their epic version. And why not also improve the items for Tome of Untold Legends and Shield of Legend? The former uniqueness is also missing. All weapons now are on one copy: 5W+4 dmg dice and W depending on the base dice for the weapon. Weapons from CitW, sometimes from some quests - the aforementioned Tome of Untold Legends, Missing, the Mindsunder, Black Abbot, the former ones from ToEE or even those from wildneress 3bc - had a lot of weapons with unusual DMG dice, multiplier, or even damage type. Now there is none of this and it added flavor, a certain distinctiveness, sometimes even a greater desire for these items, it also brings the game to life.
Improving Cannith Crafting you succeeded, it is less complicated, more intuitive, a lot of possibilities have. Only I have the impression that some of the old features have disappeared, because, for example, it is impossible to add to the armor/shield guard effect. Well, and unfortunately here you can also see sometimes the problem with prefixes/suffixes that I wrote about above.
Why don't you guys increase the drop rate if only in these new packs and raids? Some time ago I went to Defiler of the Just on hard, there was not a single named item in the chest for 12 people and I had Wand of Cure Moderate Wounds. Seriously? Wand, a 4lvl item in a 31lvl raid? That's not even so much a mockery as rudeness! Hardly, I had a few hours of Moderate Treasure Hunter's Elixir on me (because I accumulated from monster manual achievement rewards) and yet I got some ridiculous wand. I wish I had taken a print screen at the time. And thus, instead of encouraging other F2P players to buy the pack, because there are cool items flying around here, you guys don't give a damn, you released the pack and wash your hands of what goes into it. And the pinnacle of insolence is the elixir of discovery that increases the named drop rate, instead of simply increasing it. And you can find a way to earn more honest and less exploitative. If someone farms a quest 20x for one item then they don't willingly enter it afterwards. And it is wrong to reason that if he gets it at once, or the second time, he will not enter anymore, he will enter because the lives ahead of him a lot.
Astral and platinum... Astral I think has brought chaos to the game. You can buy anywhere, without NPCs ... so what. You can't buy anything sensible for platinum, and if you do, the players dumbasses put things up for such an exorbitant price that it's not worth it... completely unclear why, because if someone has a plat cap of 4M achieved and sells a Raid Time Bypasser or 10 Major Mnemonic Enhancement pot for 2M plat, what's in it for them? And astral other way than the store will not get too much(except the above mentioned MM). In my opinion, you should raise the plat cap to, say, 10M, and with astrals introduce some kind of exchange. Let them be expensive if it is to be an exclusive currency e.g. 500k plat = 1as. But otherwise they introduce imbalance in the game. How about making astral shard exchanges inter-server? Because why wouldn't they? It would only raise the exchange between players and also to you it could boost astral shard sales.
- Interface.
The interface in the game almost untouchable. I can rearrange the minimap, bars, group composition, cube and quest objectives... and pretty much everything. The chat window is so sculpted that it only spoils at the bottom, I can only stretch it. As if I had a whim to give the XP bar to the top or vertically on the side, I can not, and in other games I do, or the chat window to move because at the bottom of the thick bar that matches the menu icon. The window telling me how much astral I have, and accidentally clicking on it starts the store(and therefore lags), should be able to be eliminated in the options or at least moved, I really don't need it all the time in the game, as the player will want to check how much he has or buy up he will find a way to do it. And to change the size of something, such as bars, minimap... no that's probably asking too much already. Scaling or even setting the degree of transparency is sorely lacking. Something I need less I'll set on the screen with a size of 0.9 normal size, something else I want to have bigger I'll set 1.1 relative to normal, something else I want to have still but not in the foreground I'll set the transparency of that at 70% and know what's behind it, etc. In probably every game even such hack&slash you can set a semi-transparent map for the whole screen. You want to somehow adjust to the competition - there you go, the interface as a big room for maneuvering for this. This also improves playability. Bags actually every login and opening I have to move them, because they open for me under some window, usually inventory. And on the other hand, I don't look into them as often to adjust other windows. Same with the FPS frame counter, every relog in the same place despite moving it. And scaling is also needed for those who have better monitors displaying 4K resolutions. And your interface seems to have stopped still on CRT monitors and win XP system.
- News and suggestions.
I am still on the lookout for a new species. E.g. Duergar. It was and has been in classic D&D as long as the Drow as a playable race - since D&D 4.0, it has similar facilities and penalties as the Drow, it would be an interesting race, I suppose it would attract a lot of players again. Past life Racial would probably expand CON. There are already three races from CHA, DEX, two each to the rest and what about STR? An important attribute. As far as I remember Triton had a lot of strength and bonuses and could give +1str as racial past life. There are a lot of water quests in the game, Triton would not be completely detached from the atmosphere of the game. So would the Aasimar as a half-angel race, and he came in an add-on where you fight undead mostly and not fiends. So surely you would find some expansion pack in which to introduce it(Waterdeep, Mine of Phandelver). I can already see the racial enhancements - triton doesn't slow down in wading water, or sprint/swim boost for swimming, hahaha
Bags. In the game when looting crates, often a mass of scrolls fall out, which then linger in the inventory, you have to manually discard, or not press the B key and select from the crate one by one. How about another solution. Make a bag/folder for scrolls. Where they will automatically fall in. After all, it's not just the junk ones that drop in(and some don't drop in at all - Arcane Tempest, or Celestial Bombardment since they've become spells and not ED skills, there are no scrolls to learn/use for them). Some scrolls players collect would also have a place in this bag/folder. I'm not talking about the ones used on the fly during combat like Tenser, Fire shield, Heal, sometimes Raise Dead where there is not much time to take out of the bag, use and hide but for example DDoor or Deadly weapon. Although I think this could also be solved. E.g. an interactive bar as an extra space. Let it be even 5 slots. For Potions, scrolls, etc. A place into which we put what we have in the inventory and which does not take up space in the inventory and at the same time the character does not waste time on special use of this or - as in the case of scroll - changing weapons. Although here the thing incomprehensible to me is why the weapon can not be held in the main hand and the scroll or wand to the other and be able to use it. The place would be such a hotbar that is also an additional place. More than once in the movies or in other games we see the protagonist's character has a belt with cartridges, potions, useful little things slung over his shoulder or hip. They are used instantly as from the belt, do not require additional action and at the same time do not take up additional space in the backpack. I think it would improve the dynamics in the game.
Tabs. There is a tab for equipment and its list(by the way, sometimes very helpful), there is a tab for pets and for mounts. However, I would add one more. Since Ravenloft with each new expansion you add a set of outfits, a pet and a mount. Well, okay, the mount a little later, only after Sharn. For mounts everyone has a stable tab, there are more and more of them. For pets the tab is there... since MotU. What about outfits? Why not add a tab and for that where the player with one click can change what cosmetic he is wearing without dragging it from the backpack and taking up space in the bank. Outfits also keep falling in with each birthday. Many of them I simply threw out of the character because they bothered me and I didn't plan to wear them. Today I think to myself that maybe a little too much, but if there was such a tab there would be no need to throw away(here by the way a hint to maybe add those former gift outfits such as 17th Anniversary Dark armor and similar previous ones e.g. to the Anniversary Party event and exchange them for Party Favor). The outfits are without ML so from Korthos you can go with them just like with Pets. And I am not talking about clicky cosmetics such as Spider Cult Mask or the like just the regular ones.
Taking out of bags. When I take something out of any mostly all of the item falls out or as much as fits in the pile in the backpack. And why isn't there an option to take out as much as I need, e.g. with CTRL? Because taking out one item sometimes falls out a few hundred and then you have to hide it, it gets messy. For this there could be arrows like in quivers, to move the item up or down. I myself have things arranged in my bag according to the packs they fly from or by level, arranging something again because I have, for example, 15 Signet Stone and I need to take 1 out and put it away is sometimes troublesome. Maybe the order in the bag is just my intrusiveness, but I think it would make it easier, and it's not a big undertaking to do something like that. You have recently raised the basic die of class life. And why don't you raise the number of skill points per level for classes. Such cleric, fighter, or paladin have 2pts/lvl each and useful skills more. Clr or Pal raise their running legs higher than a character can jump up and jumping is a useful and important skill. Speaking of jumping. You have recently introduced two spells in the extended version to Mass - TS and FoM. Why not Jump, Mass? It would make buffing on many raids much easier. As for the newer ones, you also added Acid Well, Iceberg and Thunderstroke. But these are not equivalent to Meteor swarm which has two types of damage(fire+bludgeon) and double range. Also it could be improved on what it is. Iceberg is a "gigantic shard of glacial ice" so as ice let it deal extra bludgeon damage. Let Thunderstroke have a chance to deal double damage and Acid well have an extra DoT, not too long but similar damage to the basic. Poor in the second type of damage? Ok let's play with associations. Lightning is electrical damage, electricity is used for welding, cutting and so let it deal slashing damage. Acid chews all the way through, so it also cuts, so damage from the element plus slashing in these two. And let all of them have double range.
With the changes in the bard - that is, quite a long time ago, the former, and a little less long ago, the latter you have changed him a little, largely I think quite well, especially since the songs do not have to play each one individually. In this case, the old version of the Inspiring Echoes trait that made each song played a mass effect would be especially helpful in raids. This trait is only in one item, bards sometimes took a long time to assemble the item just for this. Items for song regeneration are quite a lot, bards usually have songs enough, but it is a huge time saver. A bard, especially as an arcane, is a support, especially useful for caster, and there are quite a few of those on raids. It would be a significant improvement if this feature worked again as it used to. Well, but, with the changes mentioned, I remember that there was talk of something along the lines of Sonic Wall. For that there is now Horn of thunder. I daresay that Sonic wall would be more interesting, one because of the higher sonic than electric spell power(I'm comparing to Horn of Thunder which is anyway in Fatesinger's ED),and two if it had a stun addition - like soundburst, on fail save, and at the same time it would be an AoE like Firewall or Flame of the Favored it would be an interesting audiodestruction - Otto Sphere and Sonic Wall. Likewise, I think there is a bit of a lack of sets or items typical of arcane Bard - i.e. with the addition of sonic and positive spell power. Feywild Dreamer picks up sonic and Cha, but positive is lacking.
You have recently modified the conquest bonus. How about improving runsack in the same way? Or trap bonus? There are quests, such as Storm the Beaches, where the second trap, for which the bonus would fall, disarms at the last box, and to get to it you need to complete the quest. But after all, it could be easily solved. It would be enough if there was an opportunity to approach this crate earlier. And so to open the crate you need to complete the quest and so you need to smash the crystal and kill the orc. You can even move the trap panel itself to another place. And this is not the only such quest. In quests where there aren't enough traps and breakables it doesn't exist, but sometimes if you miss a few it's not a big problem to lower the bonus threshold or move a few graphics to a place earlier than the completion of Q. In Ruined Halls or Forgotten Caverns there are a few crates missing for the bonus to fall in, but the missing ones are far behind the check from the quest exit so that even sonic blast won't reach them. It really is cosmetic. Those who do not care about it, those who maximize the quests because they have fun with it will be satisfied. Ah well, and as for traps and bonuses. I think you should take out of the bonus those traps that leave mobs. It is unrealistic to disarm them in such a number to keep the bonus, and the number is random. Such a trap is usually one-shot and is not an obstacle to others.
Favor. A lot of unfinished or even such patrons for which it is impossible to finish . Favor for H. Jorasco is missing a ridiculous 7pkt - adding Age of Rage it was so hard to pay attention to it? - For H. Kundarak not a whole 60, H, Phiarlan 25pkt.... Everywhere missing under 100 you could after all add a Quest or several to make up for it. It's also a bit on the principle of such an achievment - I'll get a certain number then I'll get some cool bonus or a store with interesting things. Yugoloth, max to get 111, another threshold of 300? You did with so much as if you were planning to add something more for them and in the end nothing. The reward for those 75 great, so maybe some quests? And Bonus feat - +5hp and +2saves vs evil outsiders? The Twelve, there used to be a 250 pts threshold but instead of coming up with some interesting reward for that you eliminated it and only a 400 threshold was left - so again going for the easy way.
In different sets you push Quick Draw by force. How about, for example, a new feat, raising CL potions, clicky and srolls/wands by 2 or 3. Artificer gets this every few lvl but other classes, depending on how they play, would also like something like this. Especially since besides healing potions it would mainly extend the duration of buffs. Maybe something else interesting. You sometimes add a feat that can be useful, such as Multitude of Missiles. So you are able to come up with something creative and useful. And not feats that add +2 to skill, such as Nimble Fingers, which may have some use, very marginal, but simply a waste of space.
Maybe you would finally add expansions items to the stores? I'm thinking here mainly of unique ones. Instant teleports to Barovia, Sharn, or Spider Cult Mask, or other cosmetics. Or at least in the marketplace something that allows you to buy the difference between versions of expansions. If, for example, I bought the collector edition, and after time decided that I wanted a few things from the ultimate edition, why should I pay a higher price for something I mostly already have when I could pay just for that difference in items, and thus the difference in price. - To sum up. Too much speed, too many glitches.
It took 7 years from the first Module to Update 19. That makes 27(8 module+19 update), since then, over the next 10 years update has grown to 60, or 40 more. Twice as many(counting update alone, without module) in not much longer. Of which the initial ones, up to update 11,12 you were still fixing more bugs than uploading new content. Then it was the other way around. And from more or less MotU the first fiddle began to play Severlin, who seems to have treated the game as his own business, as if he was selling a cell phone service and leading the customers(us, the players) by the nose according to his own vision. And he didn't run the game as a product with an extensive community, which is the most important part of it, and plays the game for certain reasons that can't just be changed like a tariff at an operator. Now the baton has been taken over by Tolero then something is starting to trickle through. Some, including me, already stop believing that these bugs are random. Up 59, 59.1, 59.2... concerned mostly Droam quests. Nevertheless, you managed to botch things completely unrelated to these patches. Recently, for some unknown reason, the 32bit version of the client stopped working. Simple hotfixes take a lot of time, on top of that you always botch something else, non-issue either you extend DT or both, like with banks or TR cache. I understand that sometimes it can take a lot of time to find one bug and fix it. But it's also largely your carelessness with the script. Not only that, you duplicate your own mistakes. On Lam enters up XX, after time enters XX.1 and XX.2. However, until recently you have not done anything about it, when on the test server has already played, you introduce on the playable servers up XX and then fixing the same errors XX.1 and XX.2. What kind of moron must be to do such a thing? Or how much do you have to have players in the middle of nowhere to do this to them? You should close Lamania only to yourselves and/or a narrow group of players and only test there, and when everything works out after 10x testing and tweaking you upload to the rest of the servers where there are players. This also kills playability on servers, because a lot of people will play with builds on Lam, items and then don't have as much fun on regular servers. Especially since what goes in on Lam, soon afterwards goes in on normal servos almost unchanged. And I guess the first thing should be to check it there, how it works, make some polishing, do a recap on the forum, some preview, this time on a regular server. Maybe report that such and such an idea unfortunately did not work out, or we need to modify it to work better on Lam and only then upload it. After such recognition, sharing it with the players it will all work better together and the players themselves will feel taken more seriously. This is a test server, so test your skills and not the patience of players who only have the opportunity to check something a week before and maybe it would make your work easier. I remember like today how Up 19 was supposed to introduce new enhancements and add quests from Shadowfell Conspiracy, you botched raids in the process. E.g. Titan Awakes was almost impossible to do, because the Titan, after being knocked down with a pilar, gets up so fast that it is very difficult to hit him with a laser once, let alone 6 times. In Abbot you kicked Tiles(yes I know, both fixed long ago, this is just an example), for completing any raid for the 20th time there was a chance of not getting a list with named items, but with randomly generated ones. Heck, who the hell are you guys hiring to place IT specialists? Guys after European studies? Or after gastronomy to serve you better pizzas to nibble on? Because you probably pay them fairly for the sham, to put it mildly, that they do! In every patch you fart something new completely unrelated, or not even mentioned in the Release Notes. Ah, by the way, for not getting a list of named items for the 20th raid you then rewarded EVERY raider with a raider box making it hard to collect for CitW and other raids, also making the community collapse, also making players leave. It's good that you give compensation but, looking at the long term, isn't the cure often worse than the disease?
You set about improving things that work reasonably well and those that work poorly you don't touch. Exactly the opposite. Any engineer or mechanic knows that you don't touch what works, only what doesn't work. After all, the old store worked well, what you needed you could buy without much trouble. Now it is supposedly improved, refreshed, but turning it on makes the FPS drop to 15 and what has upgrading it changed? Nothing. The shopping cart is still not there, some things now take longer to find. It has some potential, new categories have arrived, but again - was it so necessary? There are more important things to improve. The message confirming the opening of the store is not there as for those who play through Steam and have the store on the site. So accidentally turning on the store can be an unpleasant surprise.
Some time ago, players had a problem to enter their characters and you can't solve it. "Party: [Party] /Player/: Yep. Had a few guildies who had characters stuck that could not be fully logged in. Back on European servers. One was stuck for 1.5 years becayse they never could figure it out."
You have fallen into the web. You try to get out and you still have roll 1. You are already drowning in your own mistakes, you don't grasp it, the old bug pays off in new packages, sometimes you are reminded to fix it as you need to change something to make it worse. Instead of fixing it, you release more expansions, every now and then a new pack with quests, for which you have to pay if you want to play, but the money earned on this instead of spending on bull.sh.it and "IT" bug-writers better spend on fixing this swamp. Yes, I'm being sarcastic and maybe a little ignorance comes through me, and some players will say that it doesn't bother them or I see a problem where there is no problem, because there will always be a "horse on a white knight" who crouches to defend something that is difficult to defend. And I don't blame them a bit, because for some, playing DDO is a manifestation of Stockholm syndrome. However, think about what I wrote. Although I'm afraid that the only solution to the mistakes is to write the game script from scratch and flip the players at the right time. Although you deny this with your hands and feet.
Your/our game can be compared to a house. Someone built you a house with a thousand bricks. But a malicious bricklayer put eggs instead of 100 bricks and plastered them. After time, these eggs stink cruelly, players feel where, but you do not want to look because it is time-consuming. Finally, you introduce a new update, a pack with quests. It's like a new cabinet that needs to be fixed to the wall. In the process of driving a bolt into the wall you hit an egg, so you fix it. The stink has gone a bit, but it works. Over time you upload expansion. It's like adding a room. You demolish a piece of the wall to make a connection to this room, again you remove some eggs, the stench is even bigger but in the end this new room somehow does its job. However, out of 100 eggs you got rid of maybe 20 and the rest continues to stink. Against all appearances, it will be cheaper and more solid to build the house anew, right away with these added rooms, but this time with just bricks without eggs. I appeal that before the next update you should think it over, review what is wrong in the game, what makes the game more difficult for players and fix it(instead of dealing with insignificant things), because players are starting to leave you for others, even equally old ones like WoW. Because Blizzard, makes you pay, but they do it really solidly and exemplify it, I know something about it. Even the developers from EA Games, known for having players who don't give a damn and can ban a player for daring to report something, are fine-tuning their games. Check out their release notes. Very often I see from them something like "fixed a rare bug that caused(...)" and you don't even deal with the common ones :( And I'll say it again - new players are almost non-existent. The paradox is that it's for new players that you adjust the game, and mostly it's the older ones who still play it. There was a time during the pandemic that you opened almost all game content to everyone. A lot of players returned to the game, there were even entire guilds of such returnees. But when that ended players after players gave up, those guilds fell apart. And many players left because they were reminded why they left the game in the past. It's been a long time since the Other Payment Method disappeared without a word from the store, and as I used to be able to send a missing few TPs by SMS, now I don't. The well-being of the players - something you should care about, because they are de-facto your employers. Have you heard the alternative abbreviation for the game? BDO - Bugs & Dungeons Online. No no I'd be cracking up if I were you. You always state Known Issues at the end of Release notes after some update, and you should make that your goal and not another pack, even though the game has the potential to grow, and most importantly to improve performance. This also shows your attitude towards us - you release an add-on and write at the bottom what problems it has, instead of just fixing them before release. This is not the Soviet Union where the most important thing was the deadline and if a submarine had an unfinished reactor it didn't matter, the deadline came and you have to put it into service. Players will thank you that there is a moment of present without something new and they will enjoy what they have and not this constant chase for something new. Stability is an advantage in itself. Even though even the graphics are not the freshest anymore.
Thank you for your attention.
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