Would you have purchased MD if the rare loot system had been disclosed in the release notes?

[MCPeePants]

Redoing gear tetris is expensive. One burns toolkits to move augments around (unless you happen to have a ton of spares); that cost adds up fast. Redoing a gear set that's going to want X or Y rare in the setup means either spending $$$ (toolkit) to tetris before it's fully ready or waiting until you have all the gear for every slot (and/or burn more $$$ on rerolls in hopes of that rare coming faster). I personally have mutliple pages worth of shared bank full of MD gear (including a ton of rares) that just doesn't tetris right because certain key pieces are missing (and I won't burn $$$ to redo the tetris until it's all ready to swap in one go); I've spent a ton of time farming MD for zero difference in my setup. It feels bad to waste time with zero results.

The game also revolves around TRing into different classes/builds/playstyles. Redoign gear over and over and over each TR can be a big money and time drain. The rare system (and rerolls to try to up the odds) feels like the cost to TR and try fun new builds just got way more expensive, with a lot more time spent or $$$(likely both). I had accepted the time/$$$ costs for the 10/20/30 odds to get/redo gear, the new odds are pushing outside my limits and sense of fun/reasonable.

In this post and one other, Sardonic expresses something that continues to get missed by so many with regard to the new Myth Dranor loot:

People are not chasing power, they are chasing flexibility. The depth and complexity of character building is a major factor in what sets this game apart and why many people are here and continue to come back. Item set bonuses serve to restrict build flexibility but MD loot promised to open that up.

Coupled with the fact that gear tetris requires you to rebuild everything in order to replace any (one) thing, the rare loot mechanic means people end up saving piles of gear they can't use hoping to get the one or two "rares" needed.

This is not a recipe for the long-term life of a pack. This is a recipe for people farming whichever quest holds that one item to complete their gearset, then never running it again because they're sick of it.

 

[Teh_Troll]

The rare system (and rerolls to try to up the odds) feels like the cost to TR and try fun new builds just got way more expensive, with a lot more time spent or $$$(likely both).

EXACTLY! There are TRs I could have been doing, builds I could have been trying, actual FUN I could have been having.

Instead I spent months ransacking chests.

Why do I hate SSG at this point? Because they clearly hate us.

 

[Rusty_helmet]

EXACTLY! There are TRs I could have been doing, builds I could have been trying, actual FUN I could have been having.

Instead I spent months ransacking chests.

Why do I hate SSG at this point? Because they clearly hate us.

but they gave us what we wanted! They made side chests have a chance to drop fallen weapons... l o l This was literally what Cordo said on a stream.

 

[Teh_Troll]

but they gave us what we wanted! They made side chests have a chance to drop fallen weapons... l o l This was literally what Cordo said on a stream.

SSG doesn't listen to us and doesn't care as long as people spend money.

Stop

Spending

Money.

 

[Owlbear]

I don't really care about the loot... there will eventually be new and better loot in the future anyway. I haven't bought the MD expansion yet though. I will be getting it some day for the quests/story and Eladrin race.

 

[Teh_Troll]

I don't really care about the loot... there will eventually be new and better loot in the future anyway. I haven't bought the MD expansion yet though. I will be getting it some day for the quests/story and Eladrin race.

The quests suck, save your money.

 

[Drunken.dx]

I don't particularly care about loot, loot is nice, but in the end just happy accident when running quests.
And I find MD quests and wilderness both fun and not tedious to run (quest can be fun and tedious, rare occurrence but DDO has them)

 

[MCPeePants]

SSG doesn't listen to us and doesn't care as long as people spend money.

Stop

Spending

Money.

A given behavior will not change without incentive (positive or negative).

Behavior that is rewarded will continue.

The unfortunate reality here is that most players aren't even aware of the change. Most of those that -are- aware don't seem to understand the actual issue. Of those that understand what's going on, some have no problem.

And so we arrive at a second pack following suit with the same rare mechanic.

 

[Xeroxx]

the 4th option from the was the closest, still that isńt quite it. I bought it for the hire carpet and tome mostly.
Most of the quest was kinda mehh i think along with casters with exaggerated damage and health, also the need to run very long distances across a huge map wasńt very enjoyable either. A map that big ought to have a few collect five of these and return to me for a special "just in this area" potion or buff. ( or whatever ). I ran the saga once and stuff like the need to revisit places u allready been due to the map not keeping it "explorered" bummed me out. Also the time traveling one needed an easter egg terminator somewhere too or so

 

[Wizard]

Not worth buying with money for me. An important part of an expansion - new full gear set that is aquirable within a reasonable time and is a good enough upgrade - is missing. I'll wait for DP.

It's much too tedious to farm gear with rares required to fill a set. I'll keep your IoD/Vecna/... gear instead.

It's already very time consuming to farm a named set and in MD you need to farm the augments on top, and then with rares it's just way too much.

Druid hireling was worth the price of the xpac. Only run MD once since launch

If other hirelings had proper A.I. they would be more usuable too. (hint: healers shouldn't charge into melee)

Expansion hirelings are crazy overpriced in DDO and you can't buy them seperately. Prices for content (everything not purely cosmetic is content IMHO) will be compared to other MMOs. For example there's a game where they cost 3€ and level with you and are not bugged.

 

[Kimbere]

...; I've spent a ton of time farming MD for zero difference in my setup. It feels bad to waste time with zero results.

The game also revolves around TRing into different classes/builds/playstyles. Redoign gear over and over and over each TR can be a big money and time drain. The rare system (and rerolls to try to up the odds) feels like the cost to TR and try fun new builds just got way more expensive, with a lot more time spent or $$$(likely both).

This is only a problem until players realize they can complete virtually every bit of content in the game on R10 without a single piece of MD loot.

Given the devs didn't want to add much powercreep in MD, the only real carrot they could have dangled in front of us is the QoL carrot. It would have been an exceedingly tasty carrot in my opinion. Instead, we got a bitter, modly turnip. I don't eat moldy turnips.

Replacing the the large multi-piece set bonuses with the solar/lunar aug system could have provided a big QoL improvement by significantly reducing the gear tetris complexity. It should have incentivzed upgrading your gear one piece at a time instead of needing to wait until you have a complete set to swap in. It failed to do this in many (most?) scenarios.

MD's artwork and some of the concepts were great. The execution (repetitive copy/paste design) and corrupt-a-wish implementions of those concepts (gating standard power gear behind ultra rare drop tables) is where it fell flat on it's face.

I pre-ordered MD because I thought it looked like a tasty QoL carrot. Then the moldy turnips showed up.

I won't be pre-ordering any expansions in the future. Going forward, I'll wait for the produce to actually be put on display to make sure it's a carrot, not a turnip.

 

[nix]

Quests are ok but still don't believe golden age items exist. Heck, even the fallen age items are only good as sentient food

 

[PersonMan]

We knew there would be rare, we did not know how rare was rare.

 

[Eunostos]

Contradictory answers: Have and regret for reasons (loot pivot + the whole thing is a soulless Saturday morning cartoon splice from LOTRO and crests, come on), did not get for Fiancé. (Have plenty of content left which I'm passionate about to drag him through yet, though! Perhaps i'll connect more with their next story)
Edit: wish i hadn't realised how much was yoinked from LOTRO, thought it was beautiful on its own merits but had a niggling feeling it felt "off" for Faerun then felt retroactively worse upon confirming. :(

 

[Jummby]

EXACTLY! There are TRs I could have been doing, builds I could have been trying, actual FUN I could have been having.

Instead I spent months ransacking chests.

Why do I hate SSG at this point? Because they clearly hate us.

I spent 1 month in it, than stopped. The quests just aren't that good. I ran them all into the ground for weeks with 4 toons. My first time experience was fun! I did them all with no wiki on r10 with guildies and friends.

As the dynamic shifted to how fast we could get these quest done to get some end chests, it started to feel like a job than a game.

Stuck with until the raid came out. The raid is full of bugs has nothing to it except spawns with millions of HP. The only challenge is; Do you have 90 min+ to do it on reaper while being bored to death?

Even if you took the loot aspect of this debacle of a pack, shouldn't something you paid at least 40 dollars US, be fun?

 

[Bliv]

In this post and one other, Sardonic expresses something that continues to get missed by so many with regard to the new Myth Dranor loot:

People are not chasing power, they are chasing flexibility.

This to me says it all.

I stopped TRing into new builds after a while on my TR train because it got too expensive. I just kept playing the same build over and over again and that's silly.

DDO truly shines when it comes to character customization and build options. That's where the fun is.

Yet these builds are being locked behind an ever-increasing paywall. MD just made it even more obvious.

THAT is the reason I will not spend money on the game at this time, and THAT is why I may very well uninstall at some point.

 

[Jummby]

MD might be the worst expansion.

The raid is garbage.

The quests are mediocre and very, very repetitive (CREST!!!!!!!!)

The loot is nice but doesn't matter if it literally required 500+ chest pulls to get an artifact which is the lynch-pin of the new gear and barely better than IOD.

Would I have bought it if I had complete foreknowledge? Probably, because I'm an idiot with more dollars than sense.

If I weren't an idiot, no way would I have wasted my time on this. And I definitely wouldn't have bought it for my GF who ran through it one night, got bored, and never went back.

SSG needs to do better.

I love this post.

 

[Jummby]

The quests suck, save your money.

I tell this to people who just come to raid day.

BUY IT WITH DDO POINTS, when it's in the ddo store.

Not sure how old.you are Troll, ever hear the expression wait for the video?

The pack is garbage

 

[Jummby]

This to me says it all.

I stopped TRing into new builds after a while on my TR train because it got too expensive. I just kept playing the same build over and over again and that's silly.

DDO truly shines when it comes to character customization and build options. That's where the fun is.

Yet these builds are being locked behind an ever-increasing paywall. MD just made it even more obvious.

THAT is the reason I will not spend money on the game at this time, and THAT is why I may very well uninstall at some point.

Dude, don't miss the Steam sales! Some really good games on deep discount till December 9. Hit me on discord, for coop games we are buying.

 

[Marshal_Lannes]

More ultra-rare loot, please. I'll also continue to buy the ultimate editions of all expansions.