I actually like PUG's better. I get to meet new people and enjoy a wide range of personalities and experiences because the people in the groups are always changing. That is part of what makes low level content more fun than high level content. I meet a far wider range of people, with a far wider range of abilities, when playing levels 1-9.
That's an interesting perspective. I guess the question I have is, how many thousands of hours of entertainment do you think DDO provides (not counting past life earning)? 1000? 10,000? 100,000? I've spent over 1000 hours in many different games and I can tell you they all get stale for me after a while. This game last significantly longer with the past lives than it would without it. Part of the reason "playing with friends" gets such a good reputation is that most of those static groups only play a few hours a week. If they were going for 50 hours a week, every week, they too would get bored, especially with no reward to chase.
I definitely think a new character should be intrinsically a lot stronger than they are, or at the very least, gear should be way, way easier to get. The fact that you can be wearing full plate with a large shield and have essentially no defense because they don't have enough magically induced PRR or MRR in them is a real problem. It should be far easier for a new player to not die and contribute to some degree. The easiest way to do this would be for bad gear (i.e. randomly acquired gear) to be only slightly worse than best in slot gear. At the very least crafted gear should be just as good as named item set gear so that only one grind would be needed to let a new player be ideally equipped.
thats why they came up w Iconics..though im not sure any those are free to play, since i kept ViP over the years.
Yes! Do like a "Hall of Recognition" memorial, or "Champions of Eberron", that updates yearly or somethingthere's a rest home being built for maxed out players about to retire
Reaper was supposed to be a challenge for those character builds that found elite to easy...>putting a tree to gain xp's in was doomed to a revelation style apocalypse.
to quote another thread "more goal post moving''....>nothing has moved goal posts further than a huge tree that made a challenging difficulty easier as you gained xp's in it.
The players that really deserve respect did 10 skulls way back when they had less than even 10-20 reaper points.
But lol, I don't want to put a negative spin on players achievements.. maxing reaper points is a serious milestone too >good job.
* want a gaming challenge ? go play some War thunder...trying to carry a team with 12 noobs who cant communicate through a fast pace Tank Battle with the 10 skull Russian Bias there.
One of the things I like about Free-to-play games is they have much longer "grinds" than other types of games. I want that golden apple tree to be a tree I never reach the top of (and DDO has done a truly excellent job of adding past lives at such a rate that I never feel like I am even close to getting them all). I play F2P games and do nothing to mitigate the grind. Most of those games have cash shop items designed to make the game faster and I never buy any of those items. I want the same feeling in a game that I get from life, the feeling that there is infinite potential for progression. The feeling of being "done" with a character is the feeling of being dead. Only the dead are incapable of improving. That is never a good feeling.
Something in the way you said that; I'm sensing you want a sixth.
A serious problem with DDO is that being higher in level is more of a disadvantage than an advantage. The game gets much harder as you go up in level. Starting at level 15 just starts people out on harder content. It is much less fun being a new player joining a party at level 15 than at level 1 since you are much more likely to die quickly and terribly in higher level content. The design that makes it so that you get no exp for running quests much lower than you, and that makes it so no one wants you in their group if you are even a few levels above the content, makes it so that being higher in level is more of a curse than a blessing.
Bunch-O-nuttin !!!
Very true...though, new players really shouldn't be going for elite and reaper until they know the quest, or at least have some in game friends giving pointers as they go at a fairly mellow pace
I'm all in for more content but not for more grind systems, that's not what I said.Yes, any game is going to drive away people that don't like the direction it takes, while retaining the ones that do like it. DDO has a low population for an active MMO, but it is still an active MMO all these years later. DDO was taking its dying breath when it went free-to-play. Like most MMO's it was not going to be a surviving MMO. It is a surviving MMO to this day because of the decisions that were made. It sounds like you think the absence of past lives would also have saved it. I have my doubts. Sure, some people left because they got bored and tired of endless grinds. Most, if not all, of those people also would have gotten bored and left even without the past life grind. The type of people that jump from MMO to MMO are never going to be a reliable long-term source of population.If by current audience you mean having one of the lowest populations of any active MMO I guess you have a point there
I also suspect that half the people who left the game to never look back went away in no small part because they got bored and tired of the endless and oftentimes pointless grind. Those are more numerous that all players that remain
Most people do, I have yet to find anyone who keeps accumulation past lifes once they have them all. So yea it is a grind, people want the benefits of it not just grind em for the sake of it. Except for that guy who posted earlier
No they dont, they do give purpose tho : to accumulate more power, noting to do with fun. Otherwise people wouldn't be asking for more rewards they wuld just keep grinding lifes and RXP even if they dont give them any more power
You know you can create a new alt without deleting your character, right ?
The last part of that sentence actually reinforces the point I made on my first post. It's all about the addiction to moar power creep, that seems to be the only reason why a lot of peps keep playing. It still surprises me the insane ammount of grind some are willing to endure ( or pay for ) just to get a tiny bit of ingame power that they are most likely to take away at some point in future just to sell it back to you or have you re-grind for it. The fact that some are even asking for it is quite aumsing; but hey, to each their own. Just my 2 cents. That's also why prety much all new content they release is full of bugs and rather low quality, they know that as long as they add enough power for players to chase most people will take the bait regardles of the quality of said content
This line really resonates with me because I too am surprised how much time people will play a video game with no character growth. I do not understand how people can shoot other players for the 10,000th hour in a row when nothing is accomplished by doing so, or why people will spend years raiding the same raids for nothing but gear they will throw out the moment a new expansion raises the level cap (this is how most MMO's work). Those kinds of game simply are not for me. I have to find a game with endless character growth. This usually means a leveling curve that is exponential in nature so that the last levels take years to complete. DDO found a more enjoyable method (in part because it allowed playing all the content instead of just high level content). Grind is a term used by people that don't like character growth to describe it. For me, it isn't a grind. Any more than playing a game with friends is a grind for you. Perhaps it is because I don't feel like I have to do it. It isn't a grind because I don't obligate myself to finish. Quite the opposite, I don't ever want to finish. 200 past lives is only daunting if you think you have to get them all. The way I view it, complaints about past lives is like complaining that a grocery store has 200 foods to choose from instead of just 10.
I disagree.
This seems like too much work. Pick a date, maybe the release of Myth Drannor and give everyone a unique cloak that reached 156. Done.
