Also, if Turbine opened explorable areas as public instances... or expanded it with engine like they created for LotrO - we could have vast and mysterious world .
I have a feeling this is something that probably comes up during development meetings from time to time. The problem they would run into is this: the PnP types would flip. A lot of the game's quirkier choices came out of wanting to emulate pen and paper play, especially the group/quest dynamic. People would complain that fully public wilderness instances take away from that.
On the other hand, most gamers couldn't care less about pen and paper roleplay, and the over use of instances bugs a lot of people. I don't envy the DDO deveopment team one bit.
I have a feeling this is something that probably comes up during development meetings from time to time. The problem they would run into is this: the PnP types would flip. A lot of the game's quirkier choices came out of wanting to emulate pen and paper play, especially the group/quest dynamic. People would complain that fully public wilderness instances take away from that. On the other hand, most gamers couldn't care less about pen and paper roleplay, and the over use of instances bugs a lot of people. I don't envy the DDO deveopment team one bit.
Good post.
But no. I think there are ways to do it DDO and D&D like. Pen & Paper like. Reasoning that you can play like in D&D only if you don't meet other people isn't very... reasonable for me. DDO team tried to explain this way "why is DDO instanced." And great. I love the idea of instances. Very D&Dish, especially in dungeons. But adding open areas - would it really destroy anything? Why?
I don't see why. NwN and NwN 2? There are great, very big servers, where people play like in MMO (hundreds of players). Is it still very D&D? Sure! It's awesome.
So, the only ture thing here I believe is: people fear that DDO will become so called "another WoW", which isn't doable. It would be even better to create different game from the core. But no, Turbine doesn't want to go several levels down to WoW-like gameplay.
So, would open areas change game that much? It's just another option. I don't think there's any point to make dungeons "open". Naah. I love instances. But I also like being a pioneer, traveler. We could group in "open wilderness" as usual. Or solo as usual. Only difference would be that there's a chance that you'll meet a stranger. Or a group of strangers. Isn't that great fun?
Instances - for the win, as they say. Some open areas - yeah, bring it on! More love to the game, more versatility which is the core of D&D 3.5 rule set.
So take a breath guys. Opening some areas (adder or current explorable?), and expanding them, won't make DDO WoW-like! No way, such doom isn't possible in this game. Turbine surely doesn't even want to, ever.
I think the more likely reason is the twitch combat and number of people in the same instance. Even during events they were restricting certain spell effects and the lag could become bad.
Open zones would be nice, but to make them maximum fun there should be events in them, like defending the walls against invasion, problem is that tends to concentrate people in the same area. I think they would have to restrict how many people could enter the zone instance and prevent instance swapping to make it work.
Originally posted by Dr.Rock I think the more likely reason is the twitch combat and number of people in the same instance. Even during events they were restricting certain spell effects and the lag could become bad. Open zones would be nice, but to make them maximum fun there should be events in them, like defending the walls against invasion, problem is that tends to concentrate people in the same area. I think they would have to restrict how many people could enter the zone instance and prevent instance swapping to make it work.
Sure. So maybe Risia was put down for testing of this?
I am one who really enjoyed DDO. Problem is though... it kinda ends. I'm at the level cap and it seemed like EVERYTIME I logged on it turned into "Wait for dragon run, Get 1 or 2 scales for dragon armor... and log off". Every now and then i'd do another big dungeon run or something but not often. One of the above posters is right when he said that people don't run alot of the quests... Most people have a couple quests they do and know which ones to do to get the lvls quick. No one really explores anymore.
I'm a HUGE PnP guy (have been for years and years) and while I think they DID stray a little far from the core books they did come up with some GREAT gameplay and game mechanics for an MMO. HOWEVER I do feel that while the mechanics are amazing it could have been better and they could have given better incentive to do all the quests (although I really don't know how they could past what they did).
My fondest memories of this game came from BETA when no one knew quests like waterworks and we had fun discovering things like underwater tunnels and taking our time with the quests cause no one had "Super builds" that have seemed to pop up for every class. I just feel that this game while amazing doesn't age well as it loses it's luster when people seek ways to speed their alts to cap. This is deffinitly a game that would have Greatly benifited from a blackout. Like anyone Subscribed would be unable to use the internet or ANY other form of communication other than in game lol so they couldn't look at ANY guides or forums.
To the OP... Keep playing and go through the Waterworks as your first dungeon crawl lvl 3-4 you'll have a blast. The game is realy fun and is deffinitly worth Subbing to DEFFINITLY. All my problems with the game will come after a couple months of playing. Which is what i meant the game is fantastic. But to ME it's just not one of those games you can play for the rest of your life like some.
Originally posted by Everith I am one who really enjoyed DDO. Problem is though... it kinda ends. I'm at the level cap and it seemed like EVERYTIME I logged on it turned into "Wait for dragon run, Get 1 or 2 scales for dragon armor... and log off". Every now and then i'd do another big dungeon run or something but not often. One of the above posters is right when he said that people don't run alot of the quests... Most people have a couple quests they do and know which ones to do to get the lvls quick. No one really explores anymore.
Hi. I understand your post, it has some good points. But trust me, there's no such thing as "no one" . I meet many new players and they're actually exploring hard-core. And those who know the quests around lev 6 are often actually asking others if they know a quest or not. So, they're not sure - that's another indications there's some new blood around. Other than that, last night I saw 2-3 groups around level 4-7 in LFM, which leaders asked for a guide. This also means a lot.
So yeah, there are actually people who don't want to rush, don't even know the game, let alone higher level quests.
Another story from Keeper. Two days ago dwarf level 6th asked me about some modifier (why he has double the penalty for swimming from his armor). Another example that made me wonder. Of course, other people ignored him . He used General chat. It gets more and more use from newcomers.
Yea sorry i REALLY didn't mean to come off the way I did. I MAINLY meant that for "me" the game is fun for a while and not much of a long term retreat.
Yea sorry i REALLY didn't mean to come off the way I did. I MAINLY meant that for "me" the game is fun for a while and not much of a long term retreat.
And you made a nice post detailing how it can become borring; ie, focusing on a single goal and ommitting other content.
I wish the content scaled upwards so running a level 3 quest with a lvl 16 character would still have a reasonably interesting and challenging adventure. Improving the Favor system and allowing for more content to exist outside a Quest is possibily what DDO needs more then anything else.
Even though ti's a good game there's still room for improvement and I hope I'm there to experiance it.
Same here... Since i can't convince ANY of my friends to play NWN2 with me since it's fairly awfull in comparrison to the original I really did love every moment of leveling in DDO. To bad i can't convince myself to play anything but a cleric or a bard lol.
Yea sorry i REALLY didn't mean to come off the way I did. I MAINLY meant that for "me" the game is fun for a while and not much of a long term retreat.
I didn't think your post came off as anything other than what you meant. I think the thing they should have spent a lot of time on, and had implemented very soon after launch, was crafting. Having a deeper economy and something meaningful to do while not fighting is really important if you want to keep people playing after they've hit level cap. Plus, crafting is a big part of PnP D&D. I canceled my subscription after my first Shroud run. For weeks I'd been bouncing between soloing the Orchard, flagging for the Shroud, and waiting for my Reaver and Hound timers to cool down. I was starting to feel claustrophobic. After finishing the Shroud I realized how many more runs I would have to do to make the items I wanted, and I decided it was time to move on.
"Totally recognise that feeling. I started taking breaks to try other MMOs, but killing rats, delivering parcels, and repeatedly clicking attack types in a bar was never going to be enough. So now I take breaks and play single player games until the DDO addiction gets too hard to resist."
That is what I do as well with this and CoX. When I get a little burnt try out a single player or coop game, it's really a great mix for me. Looking forward to the Content Creation System in CoX, DDO would be amazing with something like that. Just being able to change up mobs and trap locations in each dungeon would be pretty amazing. I am completely insulted doing X of X quests.
Originally posted by TheAesthete What keeps DDO from being mainstream is its quest system, which suffers, in my view, from too much of a good thing. My first month playing DDO I was so impressed with the depth of the quests I couldn't believe the game wasn't more popular. By my third month, having done some of the same quests for the tenth or twentieth time (some of which take well over an hour to complete), I found myself longing to deliver a package for an NPC and kill ten rats along the way.
Totally recognise that feeling. I started taking breaks to try other MMOs, but killing rats, delivering parcels, and repeatedly clicking attack types in a bar was never going to be enough. So now I take breaks and play single player games until the DDO addiction gets too hard to resist.
I would like if DDO opened up the explorer areas in to open zones and added low level questing, like other MMOs just for the variety. A lot of DDO people see this as eating in to the proper quest production, but seeing how they can chuck out explorer areas with little effort then I see no reason why a bit of standard MMO junk questing couldn't be introduced.
I would prefer if they made design tools available for players so they can build their own quests and submit for inclusion (to maintain quality and consistency). If they did this I think it would move DDO from a niche game to a MMO community project and that could really have a big impact on the future of MMOs.
Agreed. Making the explorer areas open instances would help. Even if they are not sure, open one then, like Searing hieghts and stick aquest enterance in there. People rarely do that explorer and even ifthe quest was stupid, it would be a fine experiment for Turbine to do. I think they would see that would be best middle ground between open instances and closed ones.
Yes, I am a gamer girl. Dungeons and Dragons Online: April 2006 THELANIS: Guild: Merc's Only. Trissa, Kleo, Sousake, Mulder, Roselyn, Caboose, Kaname, Scully, Courwin, Oncoming, Lanarissa, Doomlord, Tnannet, Healbotatron, keitherland, Keatheran, Allura, Riversong, Johnsmith, Jennysmith I also play Star Trek Online and LotRO, on occasion.
Originally posted by Doctorwhofan Making the explorer areas open instances would help. Even if they are not sure, open one then, like Searing hieghts and stick aquest enterance in there.
Personally, I don't see DDO being fit for that kind of area. DDO is, by nature, fast-paced. That goes with its FPS-like controls. The problem, here, is that this fast-paced gameplay does not permit open areas like in other MMOs. If Turbine would want to try something like that, they would have to reinvent the wheel.
The feel just would not be the same.
Other than that, there are a few more problems:
Searing Heights would be a poor area since it's way too much trouble (let's face, you get your ass handed over in there) and it's too high level to to introduce newbies to something. Cerulean Hills would be a better choice.
It's too much work for Turbine to "try" it. They have to be quite certain it will work. They will have to create an XP system that does not suck. The current would not work, because of kill steal. It'd be far too frustrating.
The lag would probably be unbearable. Turbine would have to find a way to work around that (although maybe it would stop the lag in the Shroud).
With that said, maybe this will sound like a silly question but... how exactly did we come to the conclusion that what DDO needs to be more popular is those (boring) open areas?
Is it because there's nothnig to do other than questing? If so, would not there be anything better to steal from other MMOs than this? I am sure there are. Minigames, for example, would be great if that is the problem.
Is it that soloing is too hard? If so, wouldn't improving self-healing be better?
I keep looking back in the thread and I don't see the logical progression. Anyone mind filling me in? As for right now, I'm kinda lost. What am I missing?
I believe the logical jump was that Turbine will never be able to produce handcrafted quests at a rate that would satisfy someone who plays a MMO for a large number of hours. They could produce content similar to other MMOs as shown by knocking out explorer areas without greatly impacting their proper quest output.
This may or may depending on your viewpoint be worthwhile. Really depends on whether you consider the explorer areas worthwhile at the moment, or would they be better with something going on in them like a raid on the walls at set times that everyone can join in, instanced as needed.
Personally making quest building a community activity is the way DDO should go IMO, as it fits the PnP roots. With some control to make sure we are not swamped in mediocre content.
Originally posted by Dr.Rock I believe the logical jump was that Turbine will never be able to produce handcrafted quests at a rate that would satisfy someone who plays a MMO for a large number of hours. They could produce content similar to other MMOs as shown by knocking out explorer areas without greatly impacting their proper quest output.
Well, I see two problems with that argument:
Since when are boring content like that supposed to be fun?
Such content would impact their quest design. They would have to come up with the area itself, which requires quite some time.
If we are to ask for something to not get bored, shouldn't we asking for something fun? How can one conclude "I am bored therefore area with little loot and no goal is what I am looking"?
Am I still missing on something?
Personally, if I was to design anything to both make the game feel less empty and to give us something to do other than questing, I'd go for minigames. A few years ago, I used to play Runescape (I know, I know) and even though this is far from a great game it has some strong points. When one was bored with the grinding (Runescape, for those who don't know, is nothing but grinding - even the combat system), a few minigames were available to keep yourself entertained.
Given the twitch nature of DDO, I think it could be tons of fun.
But, maybe it is just me, I don't see how open areas would be any close to fun. Walk around and pointlessly kill stuff? Is that your idea of fun? Am I not understanding what is fun about it?
I believe the logical jump was that Turbine will never be able to produce handcrafted quests at a rate that would satisfy someone who plays a MMO for a large number of hours. They could produce content similar to other MMOs as shown by knocking out explorer areas without greatly impacting their proper quest output.
Well, I see two problems with that argument:
Since when are boring content like that supposed to be fun?
Such content would impact their quest design. They would have to come up with the area itself, which requires quite some time.
If we are to ask for something to not get bored, shouldn't we asking for something fun? How can one conclude "I am bored therefore area with little loot and no goal is what I am looking"?
Am I still missing on something?
Personally, if I was to design anything to both make the game feel less empty and to give us something to do other than questing, I'd go for minigames. A few years ago, I used to play Runescape (I know, I know) and even though this is far from a great game it has some strong points. When one was bored with the grinding (Runescape, for those who don't know, is nothing but grinding - even the combat system), a few minigames were available to keep yourself entertained.
Given the twitch nature of DDO, I think it could be tons of fun.
But, maybe it is just me, I don't see how open areas would be any close to fun. Walk around and pointlessly kill stuff? Is that your idea of fun? Am I not understanding what is fun about it?
Since I started playing? I love explorable areas, nothing boring there for me. I really love even repeating them for tenth time, Turbine really made them look and feel great (especially Three Barrel Cove).
I resubbed LOTRO - After 3 hours on a new character I have very little desire to return to the game, I have seen nothing that makes me want to return to the game.
I resubbed DDO - I'm desperately stopping myself from playing because its midnight and I've been playing since early evening without a break.
DDO:
Unique combat system
Objective driven (not kill driven) quests
Dynamic environment - ledges, levers, doors.
Nice chatty people - I was pretty much ignored on LOTRO but I asked for help completing the new DDO nub area and received it within seconds.
Almost entirely instanced with short distances to quests - LOTRO should be called Lord of the walks online.
The simple fact is that there isn't an mmo on the market that has ANY of the above. I'm going to need a more much balanced argument to accept that DDO has any similarities to LOTRO other than the engine. After playing both games on the same day I can tell you that LOTRO has SERIOUS lag problems, I can play DDO at 720p fully max graphics with no lag at all and its beautiful. LOTRO wouldnt run at medium graphics in the nub areas without regular lag spikes and a very short draw distance.
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After playing both games on the same day I can tell you that LOTRO has SERIOUS lag problems
Well, glad this isn't only a DDO problem.
I get 0, nilch, nada, zero lag on DDO Im so impressed with how smooth it is at the moment.
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I believe the logical jump was that Turbine will never be able to produce handcrafted quests at a rate that would satisfy someone who plays a MMO for a large number of hours. They could produce content similar to other MMOs as shown by knocking out explorer areas without greatly impacting their proper quest output.
Well, I see two problems with that argument:
Since when are boring content like that supposed to be fun?
Such content would impact their quest design. They would have to come up with the area itself, which requires quite some time.
If we are to ask for something to not get bored, shouldn't we asking for something fun? How can one conclude "I am bored therefore area with little loot and no goal is what I am looking"?
Am I still missing on something?
Personally, if I was to design anything to both make the game feel less empty and to give us something to do other than questing, I'd go for minigames. A few years ago, I used to play Runescape (I know, I know) and even though this is far from a great game it has some strong points. When one was bored with the grinding (Runescape, for those who don't know, is nothing but grinding - even the combat system), a few minigames were available to keep yourself entertained.
Given the twitch nature of DDO, I think it could be tons of fun.
But, maybe it is just me, I don't see how open areas would be any close to fun. Walk around and pointlessly kill stuff? Is that your idea of fun? Am I not understanding what is fun about it?
I have no problem with mini games being added. But to be clear I wasn't suggesting explorer areas have exactly the same noddy MMO content as other games, they sort of have that already. I was suggesting as per my previous post they be server events, or they are at least glossed up so that they at least have some imagination and use some of the excellent DDO quest tools, just in an explorer area.
Here is a previous post where I explained how you could use the middle ground.
Originally posted by Dr.Rock But to be clear I wasn't suggesting explorer areas have exactly the same noddy MMO content as other games, they sort of have that already. I was suggesting as per my previous post they be server events, or they are at least glossed up so that they at least have some imagination and use some of the excellent DDO quest tools, just in an explorer area.
I can certainly agree that the Explorer areas are lackluster.
Not totally sure if I'd go with your suggestion but they could use some lovin'. Though, I would not rank this as important. I just made a post on the DDO forums (here) as to what I thought would really help DDO to retain the new players' attention during their 10 day trial.
Why hasn't there been user generated content introduced as a complete module yet? is there an issue with allowing players to be able to create their own adventures for themselves and others to play? or has something been said that this is on the drawing board?
I just believe that with the whole community creating content and having it qualtiy checked by the community that the replayability of DDO would be huge, the choices would be limitless.
I also played DDO from beta and got my guild who basically move from MMO to MMO to give it a try, sorry to say it wasn't for them and most left within the free month, but I have wandered back from time to time and surprisingly my son and his friend have both taken an immense shine to the game (both of them are aged 14) so I have been fortunate that I have been able to form quite a tight knit group who I have tried to encourage to explore the game to it's fullest and not rush through the dungeons but to treat each one as a complete story and not just as a means to get exp and lvl up.
They seem to have enjoyed playing that way and are always keen to play more, unfortunately my budget is very tight due to losing my job and ofc running 2 accounts on DDO isn't possible atm but I will return once things get better, the boys are also eager to get back into the game.
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I have a feeling this is something that probably comes up during development meetings from time to time. The problem they would run into is this: the PnP types would flip. A lot of the game's quirkier choices came out of wanting to emulate pen and paper play, especially the group/quest dynamic. People would complain that fully public wilderness instances take away from that.
On the other hand, most gamers couldn't care less about pen and paper roleplay, and the over use of instances bugs a lot of people. I don't envy the DDO deveopment team one bit.
But no. I think there are ways to do it DDO and D&D like. Pen & Paper like.
Reasoning that you can play like in D&D only if you don't meet other people isn't very... reasonable for me. DDO team tried to explain this way "why is DDO instanced."
And great. I love the idea of instances. Very D&Dish, especially in dungeons. But adding open areas - would it really destroy anything? Why?
I don't see why. NwN and NwN 2? There are great, very big servers, where people play like in MMO (hundreds of players). Is it still very D&D? Sure! It's awesome.
So, the only ture thing here I believe is: people fear that DDO will become so called "another WoW", which isn't doable. It would be even better to create different game from the core. But no, Turbine doesn't want to go several levels down to WoW-like gameplay.
So, would open areas change game that much? It's just another option. I don't think there's any point to make dungeons "open". Naah. I love instances. But I also like being a pioneer, traveler.
We could group in "open wilderness" as usual. Or solo as usual. Only difference would be that there's a chance that you'll meet a stranger. Or a group of strangers. Isn't that great fun?
Instances - for the win, as they say. Some open areas - yeah, bring it on! More love to the game, more versatility which is the core of D&D 3.5 rule set.
So take a breath guys. Opening some areas (adder or current explorable?), and expanding them, won't make DDO WoW-like! No way, such doom isn't possible in this game. Turbine surely doesn't even want to, ever.
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I think the more likely reason is the twitch combat and number of people in the same instance. Even during events they were restricting certain spell effects and the lag could become bad.
Open zones would be nice, but to make them maximum fun there should be events in them, like defending the walls against invasion, problem is that tends to concentrate people in the same area. I think they would have to restrict how many people could enter the zone instance and prevent instance swapping to make it work.
I think that if LotrO is based on DDO engine to some extent, it's possible to work these problems out. And that new Umbra software, which was meant for LotrO & DDO, the occlusion thingy:
http://www.umbrasoftware.com/index.php?company&news=30
And a demo:
http://www.umbrasoftware.com/index.php?videoreel
Maybe it's to help with these problems?
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I am one who really enjoyed DDO. Problem is though... it kinda ends. I'm at the level cap and it seemed like EVERYTIME I logged on it turned into "Wait for dragon run, Get 1 or 2 scales for dragon armor... and log off". Every now and then i'd do another big dungeon run or something but not often. One of the above posters is right when he said that people don't run alot of the quests... Most people have a couple quests they do and know which ones to do to get the lvls quick. No one really explores anymore.
I'm a HUGE PnP guy (have been for years and years) and while I think they DID stray a little far from the core books they did come up with some GREAT gameplay and game mechanics for an MMO. HOWEVER I do feel that while the mechanics are amazing it could have been better and they could have given better incentive to do all the quests (although I really don't know how they could past what they did).
My fondest memories of this game came from BETA when no one knew quests like waterworks and we had fun discovering things like underwater tunnels and taking our time with the quests cause no one had "Super builds" that have seemed to pop up for every class. I just feel that this game while amazing doesn't age well as it loses it's luster when people seek ways to speed their alts to cap. This is deffinitly a game that would have Greatly benifited from a blackout. Like anyone Subscribed would be unable to use the internet or ANY other form of communication other than in game lol so they couldn't look at ANY guides or forums.
To the OP... Keep playing and go through the Waterworks as your first dungeon crawl lvl 3-4 you'll have a blast. The game is realy fun and is deffinitly worth Subbing to DEFFINITLY. All my problems with the game will come after a couple months of playing. Which is what i meant the game is fantastic. But to ME it's just not one of those games you can play for the rest of your life like some.
But trust me, there's no such thing as "no one"
Other than that, last night I saw 2-3 groups around level 4-7 in LFM, which leaders asked for a guide. This also means a lot.
So yeah, there are actually people who don't want to rush, don't even know the game, let alone higher level quests.
Another story from Keeper. Two days ago dwarf level 6th asked me about some modifier (why he has double the penalty for swimming from his armor). Another example that made me wonder. Of course, other people ignored him
. He used General chat. It gets more and more use from newcomers.
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Yea sorry i REALLY didn't mean to come off the way I did. I MAINLY meant that for "me" the game is fun for a while and not much of a long term retreat.
And you made a nice post detailing how it can become borring; ie, focusing on a single goal and ommitting other content.
I wish the content scaled upwards so running a level 3 quest with a lvl 16 character would still have a reasonably interesting and challenging adventure. Improving the Favor system and allowing for more content to exist outside a Quest is possibily what DDO needs more then anything else.
Even though ti's a good game there's still room for improvement and I hope I'm there to experiance it.
Same here... Since i can't convince ANY of my friends to play NWN2 with me since it's fairly awfull in comparrison to the original I really did love every moment of leveling in DDO. To bad i can't convince myself to play anything but a cleric or a bard lol.
I didn't think your post came off as anything other than what you meant. I think the thing they should have spent a lot of time on, and had implemented very soon after launch, was crafting. Having a deeper economy and something meaningful to do while not fighting is really important if you want to keep people playing after they've hit level cap. Plus, crafting is a big part of PnP D&D. I canceled my subscription after my first Shroud run. For weeks I'd been bouncing between soloing the Orchard, flagging for the Shroud, and waiting for my Reaver and Hound timers to cool down. I was starting to feel claustrophobic. After finishing the Shroud I realized how many more runs I would have to do to make the items I wanted, and I decided it was time to move on.
But I'll be back. Eventually.
"Totally recognise that feeling. I started taking breaks to try other MMOs, but killing rats, delivering parcels, and repeatedly clicking attack types in a bar was never going to be enough. So now I take breaks and play single player games until the DDO addiction gets too hard to resist."
That is what I do as well with this and CoX. When I get a little burnt try out a single player or coop game, it's really a great mix for me. Looking forward to the Content Creation System in CoX, DDO would be amazing with something like that. Just being able to change up mobs and trap locations in each dungeon would be pretty amazing. I am completely insulted doing X of X quests.
Totally recognise that feeling. I started taking breaks to try other MMOs, but killing rats, delivering parcels, and repeatedly clicking attack types in a bar was never going to be enough. So now I take breaks and play single player games until the DDO addiction gets too hard to resist.
I would like if DDO opened up the explorer areas in to open zones and added low level questing, like other MMOs just for the variety. A lot of DDO people see this as eating in to the proper quest production, but seeing how they can chuck out explorer areas with little effort then I see no reason why a bit of standard MMO junk questing couldn't be introduced.
I would prefer if they made design tools available for players so they can build their own quests and submit for inclusion (to maintain quality and consistency). If they did this I think it would move DDO from a niche game to a MMO community project and that could really have a big impact on the future of MMOs.
Agreed. Making the explorer areas open instances would help. Even if they are not sure, open one then, like Searing hieghts and stick aquest enterance in there. People rarely do that explorer and even ifthe quest was stupid, it would be a fine experiment for Turbine to do. I think they would see that would be best middle ground between open instances and closed ones.
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The feel just would not be the same.
Other than that, there are a few more problems:
- Searing Heights would be a poor area since it's way too much trouble (let's face, you get your ass handed over in there) and it's too high level to to introduce newbies to something. Cerulean Hills would be a better choice.
- It's too much work for Turbine to "try" it. They have to be quite certain it will work. They will have to create an XP system that does not suck. The current would not work, because of kill steal. It'd be far too frustrating.
- The lag would probably be unbearable. Turbine would have to find a way to work around that (although maybe it would stop the lag in the Shroud).
With that said, maybe this will sound like a silly question but... how exactly did we come to the conclusion that what DDO needs to be more popular is those (boring) open areas?Is it because there's nothnig to do other than questing? If so, would not there be anything better to steal from other MMOs than this? I am sure there are. Minigames, for example, would be great if that is the problem.
Is it that soloing is too hard? If so, wouldn't improving self-healing be better?
I keep looking back in the thread and I don't see the logical progression. Anyone mind filling me in? As for right now, I'm kinda lost. What am I missing?
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I believe the logical jump was that Turbine will never be able to produce handcrafted quests at a rate that would satisfy someone who plays a MMO for a large number of hours. They could produce content similar to other MMOs as shown by knocking out explorer areas without greatly impacting their proper quest output.
This may or may depending on your viewpoint be worthwhile. Really depends on whether you consider the explorer areas worthwhile at the moment, or would they be better with something going on in them like a raid on the walls at set times that everyone can join in, instanced as needed.
Personally making quest building a community activity is the way DDO should go IMO, as it fits the PnP roots. With some control to make sure we are not swamped in mediocre content.
- Since when are boring content like that supposed to be fun?
- Such content would impact their quest design. They would have to come up with the area itself, which requires quite some time.
If we are to ask for something to not get bored, shouldn't we asking for something fun? How can one conclude "I am bored therefore area with little loot and no goal is what I am looking"?Am I still missing on something?
Personally, if I was to design anything to both make the game feel less empty and to give us something to do other than questing, I'd go for minigames. A few years ago, I used to play Runescape (I know, I know) and even though this is far from a great game it has some strong points. When one was bored with the grinding (Runescape, for those who don't know, is nothing but grinding - even the combat system), a few minigames were available to keep yourself entertained.
Given the twitch nature of DDO, I think it could be tons of fun.
But, maybe it is just me, I don't see how open areas would be any close to fun. Walk around and pointlessly kill stuff? Is that your idea of fun? Am I not understanding what is fun about it?
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- Since when are boring content like that supposed to be fun?
- Such content would impact their quest design. They would have to come up with the area itself, which requires quite some time.
If we are to ask for something to not get bored, shouldn't we asking for something fun? How can one conclude "I am bored therefore area with little loot and no goal is what I am looking"?Am I still missing on something?
Personally, if I was to design anything to both make the game feel less empty and to give us something to do other than questing, I'd go for minigames. A few years ago, I used to play Runescape (I know, I know) and even though this is far from a great game it has some strong points. When one was bored with the grinding (Runescape, for those who don't know, is nothing but grinding - even the combat system), a few minigames were available to keep yourself entertained.
Given the twitch nature of DDO, I think it could be tons of fun.
But, maybe it is just me, I don't see how open areas would be any close to fun. Walk around and pointlessly kill stuff? Is that your idea of fun? Am I not understanding what is fun about it?
Since I started playing?
I love explorable areas, nothing boring there for me. I really love even repeating them for tenth time, Turbine really made them look and feel great (especially Three Barrel Cove).
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Im bored.
I resubbed LOTRO - After 3 hours on a new character I have very little desire to return to the game, I have seen nothing that makes me want to return to the game.
I resubbed DDO - I'm desperately stopping myself from playing because its midnight and I've been playing since early evening without a break.
DDO:
Unique combat system
Objective driven (not kill driven) quests
Dynamic environment - ledges, levers, doors.
Nice chatty people - I was pretty much ignored on LOTRO but I asked for help completing the new DDO nub area and received it within seconds.
Almost entirely instanced with short distances to quests - LOTRO should be called Lord of the walks online.
The simple fact is that there isn't an mmo on the market that has ANY of the above. I'm going to need a more much balanced argument to accept that DDO has any similarities to LOTRO other than the engine. After playing both games on the same day I can tell you that LOTRO has SERIOUS lag problems, I can play DDO at 720p fully max graphics with no lag at all and its beautiful. LOTRO wouldnt run at medium graphics in the nub areas without regular lag spikes and a very short draw distance.
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I get 0, nilch, nada, zero lag on DDO
Im so impressed with how smooth it is at the moment.
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- Since when are boring content like that supposed to be fun?
- Such content would impact their quest design. They would have to come up with the area itself, which requires quite some time.
If we are to ask for something to not get bored, shouldn't we asking for something fun? How can one conclude "I am bored therefore area with little loot and no goal is what I am looking"?Am I still missing on something?
Personally, if I was to design anything to both make the game feel less empty and to give us something to do other than questing, I'd go for minigames. A few years ago, I used to play Runescape (I know, I know) and even though this is far from a great game it has some strong points. When one was bored with the grinding (Runescape, for those who don't know, is nothing but grinding - even the combat system), a few minigames were available to keep yourself entertained.
Given the twitch nature of DDO, I think it could be tons of fun.
But, maybe it is just me, I don't see how open areas would be any close to fun. Walk around and pointlessly kill stuff? Is that your idea of fun? Am I not understanding what is fun about it?
I have no problem with mini games being added. But to be clear I wasn't suggesting explorer areas have exactly the same noddy MMO content as other games, they sort of have that already. I was suggesting as per my previous post they be server events, or they are at least glossed up so that they at least have some imagination and use some of the excellent DDO quest tools, just in an explorer area.
Here is a previous post where I explained how you could use the middle ground.
www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/2154329#2154329
I can certainly agree that the Explorer areas are lackluster.
Not totally sure if I'd go with your suggestion but they could use some lovin'. Though, I would not rank this as important. I just made a post on the DDO forums (here) as to what I thought would really help DDO to retain the new players' attention during their 10 day trial.
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Your link appears to be broken.
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Why hasn't there been user generated content introduced as a complete module yet? is there an issue with allowing players to be able to create their own adventures for themselves and others to play? or has something been said that this is on the drawing board?
I just believe that with the whole community creating content and having it qualtiy checked by the community that the replayability of DDO would be huge, the choices would be limitless.
I also played DDO from beta and got my guild who basically move from MMO to MMO to give it a try, sorry to say it wasn't for them and most left within the free month, but I have wandered back from time to time and surprisingly my son and his friend have both taken an immense shine to the game (both of them are aged 14) so I have been fortunate that I have been able to form quite a tight knit group who I have tried to encourage to explore the game to it's fullest and not rush through the dungeons but to treat each one as a complete story and not just as a means to get exp and lvl up.
They seem to have enjoyed playing that way and are always keen to play more, unfortunately my budget is very tight due to losing my job and ofc running 2 accounts on DDO isn't possible atm but I will return once things get better, the boys are also eager to get back into the game.