Short form: Remove time consuming manual systems by just going to the end result. Examples; instead of manually creating Cannith essences let us buy them, eliminate repair, have near instant hp/sp regeneration in public areas, replace 'random generated' items with more coins and the ability to buy those items.
Long form: There are a number of systems in DDO that seem to exist SOLELY to consume player time on tasks that are, at best, tedious.
The purest example of this I can think of is the process for dissolving magic items to create Cannith essences. You buy dissolving materials with coins and then feed each item and a dissolver into a machine one at a time to get back Cannith essences and coins. The amount of coins received is less than what you would have gotten selling the same item to a vendor.
So, rather than this manual process that turns objects into essences... why couldn't we just use the faster process of selling items to vendors and then BUY Cannith essences? The end result is exactly the same... we lose objects and coins and get Cannith essences in exchange. We just no longer have to run to one of the handful of locations with the proper machine and spend hours manually feeding items to it one at a time.
Before anyone says 'realism'... the current system ISN'T it. Realistically, in an actual economy, House Cannith would purchase the most cost effective items for conversion en masse, have specialized automated processes for converting them to essences, and sell them (for a profit) at a lower end cost than what individuals could achieve on their own.
Other examples;
Repair: We convert player time and coins into undamaged items. Theoretically, some items could become so badly damaged that they can no longer be used, but there are rituals to delay or outright prevent that... which nobody bothers with because by the time it might be an issue they've moved on to a better item. Just give us fewer coins... or charge a 'maintenance fee' of coins/game hour or some such to reflect the cost of keeping our equipment repaired.
HP/SP regen: Once upon a time there was this idea that players would gather and socialize in taverns because they had to go there to get HP/SP back more quickly. Never worked. People would just do other things while waiting for their characters to recover. Now most run to their airship to get the super fast regen. Which is only even needed after being in a wilderness zone for a while or a failed quest. Why? Why make us NOT play the game for some period of time? Just make it so you get to a public area, you get HP/SP back near instantly. If you must, charge another fee to reflect the cost of the various 'tavern only' food and drink items that are almost never actually used.
Random loot: In theory, players find random generated loot in dungeons and sell the stuff they don't want... which can then be bought by other players. In practice, the systems around this are SO unbelievably tedious that no one uses them. Instead of taking the extra time to seek out pawnbrokers for better prices, people sell to vendors and the loot is 'destroyed'. Likewise, instead of going to pawnbrokers spread all over the world and looking through their inventories one item at a time people just do not bother. So... we have a system that gives players a lot of junk they don't want and then they spend time to convert that junk into coins. In theory, other players are supposed to be able to convert coins into items of the same type that they DO want. Why not just remove all the randomly generated gear (i.e. '+3 Entropic Dagger of Silliness') from rewards, give us correspondingly more coins, and let us BUY items of that kind from vendors? Player time saved. System actually does what it was supposed to.
Et cetera. There are MANY systems in DDO like this that consume a great deal of time for little purpose. What are some that you'd like to see eliminated / simplified?
Long form: There are a number of systems in DDO that seem to exist SOLELY to consume player time on tasks that are, at best, tedious.
The purest example of this I can think of is the process for dissolving magic items to create Cannith essences. You buy dissolving materials with coins and then feed each item and a dissolver into a machine one at a time to get back Cannith essences and coins. The amount of coins received is less than what you would have gotten selling the same item to a vendor.
So, rather than this manual process that turns objects into essences... why couldn't we just use the faster process of selling items to vendors and then BUY Cannith essences? The end result is exactly the same... we lose objects and coins and get Cannith essences in exchange. We just no longer have to run to one of the handful of locations with the proper machine and spend hours manually feeding items to it one at a time.
Before anyone says 'realism'... the current system ISN'T it. Realistically, in an actual economy, House Cannith would purchase the most cost effective items for conversion en masse, have specialized automated processes for converting them to essences, and sell them (for a profit) at a lower end cost than what individuals could achieve on their own.
Other examples;
Repair: We convert player time and coins into undamaged items. Theoretically, some items could become so badly damaged that they can no longer be used, but there are rituals to delay or outright prevent that... which nobody bothers with because by the time it might be an issue they've moved on to a better item. Just give us fewer coins... or charge a 'maintenance fee' of coins/game hour or some such to reflect the cost of keeping our equipment repaired.
HP/SP regen: Once upon a time there was this idea that players would gather and socialize in taverns because they had to go there to get HP/SP back more quickly. Never worked. People would just do other things while waiting for their characters to recover. Now most run to their airship to get the super fast regen. Which is only even needed after being in a wilderness zone for a while or a failed quest. Why? Why make us NOT play the game for some period of time? Just make it so you get to a public area, you get HP/SP back near instantly. If you must, charge another fee to reflect the cost of the various 'tavern only' food and drink items that are almost never actually used.
Random loot: In theory, players find random generated loot in dungeons and sell the stuff they don't want... which can then be bought by other players. In practice, the systems around this are SO unbelievably tedious that no one uses them. Instead of taking the extra time to seek out pawnbrokers for better prices, people sell to vendors and the loot is 'destroyed'. Likewise, instead of going to pawnbrokers spread all over the world and looking through their inventories one item at a time people just do not bother. So... we have a system that gives players a lot of junk they don't want and then they spend time to convert that junk into coins. In theory, other players are supposed to be able to convert coins into items of the same type that they DO want. Why not just remove all the randomly generated gear (i.e. '+3 Entropic Dagger of Silliness') from rewards, give us correspondingly more coins, and let us BUY items of that kind from vendors? Player time saved. System actually does what it was supposed to.
Et cetera. There are MANY systems in DDO like this that consume a great deal of time for little purpose. What are some that you'd like to see eliminated / simplified?
Upvote
3
