To SSG; The endgame and the mountain we climb

[woq]

Some popular MMOs have extensive grinds (I've only played WoW outside of DDO, I'm sure gamers here can add commentary to some of the others), DDO is hardly the worst:

WoW
Leveling to Cap: Relatively easy
Exploring the world: Extreme, could take years.
Accumulating Achievements/Completing All Quests: Extreme, could take years. ~2,000-10,000 hours
Gear: Where the end game begins, grinding gear level could take a very long time.
Pastlives: Non existent.
Catch Up: Yes, purchase max level with gear.
Active Monthly Users: 2,129,170

It cost me exactly the cost of the Battle for Azeroth expansion and one month of subscription to get boosted to near maximum power available at the time as well as a couple weeks of playtime to compete at the highest level for raiding and arenas. I didn't much care for raiding after a while but PvP I love and stuck around for. All it took was for a friend of mine to ask to come and play and we could play on equal power levels in a matter of weeks.

DDO I can't even approach that level for anywhere near that cost of money or time investment. It's about as close to the same ballpark of a comparison to be on a different continent. The comparison just looks nonsensical to me.

 

[woq]

One of the things about past lives is those stats are always good (well, some might do nothing for your current build). While someone can make a build that's bad & underperforms or wears gear that has stats that are setup all wrong; past lives just adds a little onto a character without risk of being a bad choice. Making solid builds can take a lot of game knowledge. And to tetris out a good gearset can be very complex, that said...

We've got weapon, armor, gear vendors that sell total junk. Gear boxes that offer basic gearsets based off builds "melee", "ranged", "caster" (people running hybrids can mix/match the pieces from those boxes) could be sold by those vendors instead. Just make them weaker than quest loot, maybe the level 10 gear box being on par with lvl 5 feywild gear minus set bonuses; they'd be stronger than someone's RNG luck, but weaker than those who go after farmed gear. Offer those boxes every 5 or 10 levels at vendors, or make them saga rewards, or whatever. Just a little something to remove poor gear tetris choices from breaking some people's leveling.

The vendors and lack of proper early game options would be a massive undertaking to take over in order to prune the unnecessary and downright trap vendors out of the game and add in decent enough ones to get you going, but honestly they might be worth the effort.

 

[Weaponalpha]

We still beating this dead horse? We get it. DDO requires an enormous investment in time and/or resources to achieve all goals. Kinda like real life. And just like in real life if you don't enjoy the journey then you are free to go do something else. I've leveled to cap and tr'd dozens of times (i'd give the real number but would come off as crazy...) and gained 0 more "power" since i already have all pls because i enjoy playing the game. i hop on alts n play them all the time too. and i don't feel they need to compete with my main but they are still fun to play. the only issue i see is people comparing themselves to others or people comparing their alts to others or... it has been proven time and time again that there are in fact viable 1st life builds that can manage just fine. are they twf rogs? probably not but to expect that is just insane. just play the game n have fun ffs.

It is much more nuanced than this. JayChar2019 never said it wasn't possible, they merely stated how it long it took her and her husband.

The benchmark should not be what is possible, but rather what is typical which only SSG would have access to. I am sure SSG understands the difference between a person that spends 40 hours+ per week on the game (which there is nothing wrong with) compared to a person that spends 10 hours per week playing the game which arguably is still alot of play time by societal standards.

A person's stated length of time to complete a life is correct and a fact regardless of opinions about what is possible or expected.

If SSG wants to attract more people that play 10-20 hours a week they should listen to comments from players that play that amount of time. After all, the market for people willing to play a game for 40+ hours per week is very small.

they literally said it was impossible unless you consume greater xp pots... also, the average US citizen spends 4 hours per day watching tv so 28 hours per week playing DDO would be well within societal norms.

 

[Guntango]

It cost me exactly the cost of the Battle for Azeroth expansion and one month of subscription to get boosted to near maximum power available at the time as well as a couple weeks of playtime to compete at the highest level for raiding and arenas. I didn't much care for raiding after a while but PvP I love and stuck around for. All it took was for a friend of mine to ask to come and play and we could play on equal power levels in a matter of weeks.

DDO I can't even approach that level for anywhere near that cost of money or time investment. It's about as close to the same ballpark of a comparison to be on a different continent. The comparison just looks nonsensical to me.

Azeroth on average takes 210 hours to complete. It’s about a 10th of WoW, and thats playing at an average skill level, not near the level of player who has multiple ubers in DDO. You got a chance to drive a pace car around a track in 3rd gear, that doesn’t make you Andretti. Comparisons can be very tricky.

 

[woq]

Azeroth on average takes 210 hours to complete. It’s about a 10th of WoW, and thats playing at an average skill level, not near the level of player who has multiple ubers in DDO. You got a chance to drive a pace car around a track in 3rd gear, you’re not Andretti. Comparisons can be very tricky.

Pace car in 3rd gear? Well, that was rude. I meant by the boosting the levelup pass to catch up to a new expansion, it was provided in the expansion - not by other players. The amount of time invested to compete with others for rank 1s, top positions in arena or whatever is much lesser.

So imagine there was an actual competitive scene in DDO for top raid pushing, it would be incredibly hard for others to approach. In WoW it was not, all that mattered was buying the product at the start of a new expansion and playing it for me to get to rank 1 glad ranks. The point is that in WoW to get to a *position* where you can be of level power to compete with the existing top power at the start of an expansion is not this amount of grind you proposed, in DDO it is. And that is fine because DDO has no pvp elements or real competition, the only thing is the grind. That's why I didn't understand the comparison.

For a realistic comparison DDO would have to bring catch up mechanics at the start of every expansion and there would have to be a competitive scene. Neither is true, because they are entirely different types of MMO. Which made the comparison nonsensical to me. It is not the goal of DDO, it is not the core demographic the game is made for and I don't think it should be.

 

[Guntango]

Pace car in 3rd gear? Well, that was rude. I meant by the boosting the levelup pass to catch up to a new expansion, it was provided in the expansion - not by other players. The amount of time invested to compete with others for rank 1s, top positions in arena or whatever is much lesser.

So imagine there was an actual competitive scene in DDO for top raid pushing, it would be incredibly hard for others to approach. In WoW it was not, all that mattered was buying the product at the start of a new expansion and playing it for me to get to rank 1 glad ranks. The point is that in WoW to get to a *position* where you can be of level power to compete with the existing top power at the start of an expansion is not this amount of grind you proposed, in DDO it is. And that is fine because DDO has no pvp elements or real competition, the only thing is the grind. That's why I didn't understand the comparison.

For a realistic comparison DDO would have to bring catch up mechanics at the start of every expansion and there would have to be a competitive scene. Neither is true, because they are entirely different types of MMO. Which made the comparison nonsensical to me. It is not the goal of DDO, it is not the core demographic the game is made for and I don't think it should be.

You're oversimplifying WoW and dramatically overstating the value/importance of DDO Uber completionist. A true comparison, like I provided, would be to compare doing everything in DDO vs everything in WoW.

The pace car example is not meant as a dis at all, perhaps more simply, we shouldn’t expect an Otto’s box or token to deliver the same experience and knowledge as playing WoW or DDO for 10,000 hours.

 

[woq]

You're oversimplifying WoW and dramatically overstating the value/importance of DDO Uber completionist. A true comparison, like I provided, would be to compare doing everything in DDO vs everything in WoW.

The pace car example is not meant as a dis at all, perhaps more simply, we shouldn’t expect an Otto’s box or token to deliver the same experience and knowledge as playing WoW or DDO for 10,000 hours.

Hmm, yeah I can see what you mean better now and agree to an extent - definitely shouldn't expect an Otto's box to deliver the same experience and knowledge as 10k hours. It simply won't and it's a good thing that that's not a thing imo, and I hope that's not how I come across either.

I compartmentalize these games quite a bit more than that full experience vs full experience comparison. I have a hard time doing that comparison like that and am more aligned with the Shear-bucklers apples to oranges comment because the replayability of older content in DDO thanks to the reincarnation system is infinitely more present, whereas in WoW the general focus has always been on the new content and it's all hyperspecialized to the new level cap and older content has had a bigger tendency to get overshadowed, outdated or simply fade to obscurity and people generally *have* to buy the new stuff to play with their friends, where on DDO you can ignore the new content for a while and just keep trucking with your playmates and majority of lfms/lfgs are still in older content and some of the new content isn't paid for even if you don't have the best toys anymore, not all hyperspecialized to whatever is new in mythics, raids, arena. They're completely differently set up. DDO operates on a much longer timeframe than WoW with it's expansion-to-expansion basis. To get max power in DDO we are talking years (not that you need it!). To get similar relative cap power with new expansion in WoW we are talking months at most.

I'll stop derailing the thread now though before we turn into another multi-page back and forth. Good talk!

 

[Coffey]

 

[Shear-buckler]

DDO I can't even approach that level for anywhere near that cost of money or time investment. It's about as close to the same ballpark of a comparison to be on a different continent. The comparison just looks nonsensical to me.

Yeah, framing it as "wow has 10000 hours of grind but you can pay a small sum to bypass it" is deeply dishonest. The grind bypass you can buy in wow is comparable to heroic/epic otto boxes with some basic gear thrown in.

 

[Lazuli]

I don't expect them to put catch up mechanisms as fast as other games. In some sense, it's okay for DDO to have a slower pace. But the whole PL issue has gotten very out of hand.

They should shorten that grind a little because it's too long. It's crazy, if you think about it from the point of view of a new player, who also needs to do other accessory grinds. And they continue to expand it more and more.

The new archetype-iconic PLs have been more or less passable because they have returned to the original Turbine model of not being universally necessary. But devs need to forget the idea of a new legendary PL grind; that would only exacerbate the problem. And put some mechanisms to reduce the number of PLs that have to be done. Or at least, if they don't want to shorten the number, they should front-load it. Simply changing the order of the racial PLs and giving a racial life along with a heroic one would speed up the process quite a bit.

I also don't understand why they have linked the number of ED points to the number of PLs we have. The benefit of epic PL is very good, epic grind didn't need an additional incentive. It was a mistake on their part not to give all the points regardless of the number of PL we have.

I can't imagine why they haven't already changed the order of the racial PLs. That would help the new ones a lot, and wouldn't affect the veterans at all. In truth, if a veteran complained about this it would be out of pure selfishness.

 

[Cyran]

I also don't understand why they have linked the number of ED points to the number of PLs we have. The benefit of epic PL is very good, epic grind didn't need an additional incentive. It was a mistake on their part not to give all the points regardless of the number of PL we have.

My bet is if they created the system in isolation they probably would not of but they created the system with the baggage of the old system that let you have all the power at level 20 after you unlocked it first time and epic PLs was tied to twist of fates. To not make it seem like anyone that grinded for twist of fates wasted there time they moved that progress toward the perm Destiney points system and the perm Destiney point system was there as a compromise so there was still a big boost in power at level 20 even if it was not as big as the old system.

I do agree that the one change that would reduce the time it take to get the majority of the power in the past life system would be to front load racial AP's. This will put it more in align with other systems like first 12 epic past lives to get your 4 stances give the most power, Heroic past lives for most part fairly minor to any build so can just pick and choose, Iconic first 3 for the stance you want give most power, Reaper I would say the vast majority of power is in first 84 reaper points so 7,056,000. Going from that too 24,336,00 for 156 in most builds come down to more HP, there may be some exception like maybe a melee warlock where maxing MP and SP matters but for most part you in good shape going deep in 2 trees.

Then you got racial action points where you can make a augment that going from 5 to 6 give less power then going 11 to 12 and that less then going 15-16. On top of that you only get one every 3 lives make this a extremely backloaded system unlike any of the other exp grinds.

My personal take on grind is if the goal is just the achievement of getting every past lives then I really don't think reducing the grind is needed but if the goal is to get new players at a reasonable pace so they can use the same builds end players uses then some grind reduction is needed and simply changing the racial past life grind to be front loaded would achieve that.

On the Destiney points being tied to epic past lives this can be a issue but for most part I not seen many builds where having a few less Destiney points totally break it but on other hand lacking the racial AP appears to me to have a much bigger impact on weather certain builds will even work.

 

[Lazuli]

On the Destiney points being tied to epic past lives this can be a issue but for most part I not seen many builds where having a few less Destiney points totally break it but on other hand lacking the racial AP appears to me to have a much bigger impact on weather certain builds will even work.

As someone who has several characters with maxed EDs and several characters who barely have a handful of EPLs, I can say that the difference between having extra points to spend on EDs and not is not small. It is having points to invest in three trees or just two.

I don't expect them to change this (well, I don't really expect them to change anything, to be honest), but it was a mistake that widened the distance between old characters and new characters (newbies, alts)

Although without a doubt the most offensive grind is the racial one. I don't know what they smoked when they created it, but it was something crazy.

 

[TANUKING]

I don't mind making the mountain easier to climb, but please don't change the height of the mountain.
I've climbed all the way up to the top...

 

[Cyran]

As someone who has several characters with maxed EDs and several characters who barely have a handful of EPLs, I can say that the difference between having extra points to spend on EDs and not is not small. It is having points to invest in three trees or just two.

I don't expect them to change this (well, I don't really expect them to change anything, to be honest), but it was a mistake that widened the distance between old characters and new characters (newbies, alts)

Although without a doubt the most offensive grind is the racial one. I don't know what they smoked when they created it, but it was something crazy.

I don't disagree, My main have max EDs and none of my alts have more then 12 so I can defiantly feel the power difference. The distinction I making is at least in my experience I never redesign a build base on Destiney points. It just end up being a weaker version but same overall build. On the racial side I have decided in past to not even do a build till after I gotten the racial action points.

 

[Br4d]

Again, the easy way to address the entire issue of catch up is to put out a server that is just for people who want to play the game and not grind much at all.

For those who say this is already available on the regular servers: no it is not. The LFM's on the regular servers have nothing to do with casual and most people who group in them do not want to group with casual players.

SSG would get plenty of income out of the new players who stick around and likely find a few whales in the process.

Spending money on DDO falls into 3 categories.

1. Initial investment to get the game to playable status after the first few levels.

2. Planned splurges around sales to pick up things that look cheap and effective.

3. Impulse buys, which are unpredictable but tend towards the upper tier of spending on the game.

Most new players will not get past 1 above because they're swimming in a pool that is clearly over their heads. A casual/new player server would keep many of them in the game until 2 and 3 above eventually applied.

 

[Speed]

Again, the easy way to address the entire issue of catch up is to put out a server that is just for people who want to play the game and not grind much at all.

For those who say this is already available on the regular servers: no it is not. The LFM's on the regular servers have nothing to do with casual and most people who group in them do not want to group with casual players.

This is probably the best solution, to make one server for new commers and people who want to group with ones that are not interested in extra passives, but just want to play the game how they like with similar power level.
I would still keep reaper mode for anyone who wants more challenge, just no past lives, reaper tree, tomes, ship buffs, but crafting should be fine.
Free transfer to other servers if someone needs progress to long goal.
Everybody wins here, right?

 

[rabidfox]

For those who say this is already available on the regular servers: no it is not. The LFM's on the regular servers have nothing to do with casual and most people who group in them do not want to group with casual players.

How many LFMs do you post for "casual" players? I don't pop into people's LFM's on n/h/e nor r1's with "slow roll", "taking our time", "flowersniffing", "no zerg", etc. in the listings. The only time I join into quests that are obviously meant for casual people is when they add "NEED HELP! PLEASE! DEAD NEAR END!" or something to that effect in their listing; I'll join in, res them, ask if they want me to nuke the remaining mob or if the res was all they needed. But if one doesn't post LFMs then one isn't likely to get groups that appeal to them; and I think quite a few people just never post LFMs which limits what grouping they can do.

 

[Shear-buckler]

Again, the easy way to address the entire issue of catch up is to put out a server that is just for people who want to play the game and not grind much at all.

No, the categorisation of "no grind or endless grind" would miss the vast majority of players in my estimation. The way to adress the issue is to make leveling a bit faster. It worked fantastic before and I see no reason why it wouldn't again. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that.

 

[Speed]

No, the categorisation of "no grind or endless grind" would miss the vast majority of players in my estimation. The way to adress the issue is to make leveling a bit faster. It worked fantastic before and I see no reason why it wouldn't again. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that.

Take into account that players are really different.
There are people who play for years and still do not care about TR.
Yes, they just delete characters and start over for 100+ time instead of TR (may not sound exciting or fresh or like moving forward, but this is how some like to play).
Just like players that do not play reapers (they may also fit category unless they enjoy being too powerful for elite).
We could create more categories, but the point is that preferences are different and there are no reliable stats what majority really wants (including people that do not participate in forum), each player can only think for themselves.
On other side are players who must have long goal to keep playing or ones who already did hard effort and would feel that they wasted time (or money) since others can achieve same more easily.

 

[Shear-buckler]

Take into account that players are really different.
There are people who play for years and still do not care about TR.
Yes, they just delete characters and start over for 100+ time instead of TR (may not sound exciting or fresh or like moving forward, but this is how some like to play).
Just like players that do not play reapers (they may also fit category unless they enjoy being too powerful for elite).
We could create more categories, but the point is that preferences are different and there are no reliable stats what majority really wants (including people that do not participate in forum), each player can only think for themselves.
On other side are players who must have long goal to keep playing or ones who already did hard effort and would feel that they wasted time (or money) since others can achieve same more easily.

Yes that is taken into account.