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Frustrating in the Extreme!
hadz
Member Posts: 712
OK, now I like the fact the DDO is supposed to be harder than average (and not "dumbed down", god i hate that expression!), I also think instances are excellent, and basically disagree with nearly every other reason that DDO-haters give for not liking this game. Do you sense a BUT coming?
BUT...DDO is frustrating in the EXTREME! And if there's one reason why I will quit a game, it's frustration! (Not difficulty BTW, they're very different) Here are my main frustrations with DDO:
1. Forced Grouping - Grouping is good, Mkay. Forced grouping is baaaad, Mkay! I log in to DDO, expecting some fun and 2 to 3 hours (or more if I get hooked) of questing. But it just so happens that there aren't that many people on, and those that have LFM (the groups that post up looking for more messages in the, fairly well designed, grouping system) advertised are rejecting my group requests, there's no one much in the taverns, blah blah etc...and you have NO GROUP! So you try to do some soloing: Now, I pride myself in being a very good soloer, even in difficult situations. In DDO, I can solo with every character type through all the early missions (easily) and through about 4 or 5 (depending on the character class I'm playing) of the level 1 & 2 missions in the harbour/lobster/dingy quests. That gets me...read it and weep...all the way to Level 1.3 and to level 2 if I repeat a few missions. After that, even if you play brilliantly your soloing capability is gone...from here on...NO GROUP, NO PLAY! Frustrating in the extreme. (EDIT: Actually I have found a way to solo many of the quests I previously thought were hard...but it's BORING in the extreme...and I could never see myself playing in this manner through even 2 levels...let alone the 10 level QUESTGRINDFEST this game is going to be)
2. Downtime - Let's say I actually want to keep playing, and I happen to find a group. Now I have to wait for them to get ready. Comments come flying: oh, you're doing that quest? (Unsatisfied with Quest has left your party), wait I just have to sell and level, hold on I have to regen my hp and mana, I just got killed, I'll meet you there, oh you're not inside yet (as you see his hp bar drop like a stone) I better go back and regen at the tavern, damn I just fell off a ramp and lost 3/4 of my hp I'll have to go back and regen at the tavern. (And that's not including the, AFK phone/food/drink/toiletbreak downtimes)
3. Missing - The D&D ruleset, while sortof good for PnP gaming is SERIOUSLY lacking as a MMORPG-translation. The main reason being the miss rate. It's WAY too "burst-damage" for an MMO. Examples: My Barbarian Warforged with a to-hit of +6 and a damage mod of +6 can one hit kill most early mobs in the game, and 2 or 3 hit kill almost all mobs in the level 1 & 2 quests. But he still misses 30 to 40 % of the time (so if he has a bad run he can actually die to a mob he could normally 1 hit kill, and that's GARBAGE right there, too much luck), on the other hand my halfling rogue (engineered for sneaking/traps not for combat, about +3 to-hit and +1 dmg) misses over 70% of the time and does such low damage that he takes 4 or 5 good hits to kill even the lowest mob. Ridiculous and FRUSTRATING! No wonder every second character on the servers is a Barbarian, Fighter (or Wizard as they don't have to rely on actually hitting the mobs). Add to this, the fact that if you are even slightly moving you get another -2 penalty on your to-hit roll and you're back to the stand in front of mob (and right click) until one of you is dead.
4. Skills - OK, so my rogue (above) is good at sneaking and disabling traps...YEAH, you'd THINK that wouldn't you. Well, he is...but he's NOT. As far as I can tell, the "take 10" rule (from PnP D&D) is not in DDO. So even with no distractions you can easily roll a 1 or other low roll and fail a perfectly simple trap disable (or lock open), irrevocably, forcing your group to wade through the whirling scythes and taking all but the lucky down to half health or dead. (And BTW my level 1 rogue with Enhancements is +14 at disabling traps, in PnP D&D that is equivallent to about a 6th or 7th level rogue). Then, even worse, is the hide and move silently (aka sneak) skills. My halfling rogue is also about +14 on both of those skills, but walk into a level 2 mission (remeber my rogue is the equivalent of a level 6 rogue in PnP D&D for sneaking) and suddenly I face a level 3 witch doctor that not only can see through my stealth (actually can hear my footsteps) but throws a curse on me.
5. Overkill - Which brings me to overkill. A level 3 witchdoctor can throw curses that (as far as I could work out) take every skill you have down by 4 and your to-hit and damage down by 4 as well. Thus rendering your (still level one...because of ultra slow leveling) character TOTALLY AND UTTERLY USELESS until he can have the curse removed. Trouble is a curse removal potion (from the local store) costs 900 gold! (My level 3 character doesn't even have this much gold yet! Yay to be useless to a group for 3 more levels while I wait for the money) Or, my other option, find a higher level Cleric to remove it. Trouble is, all the higher level clerics are in the next section of the city (which you can't get to until you do 2 of the larger group quests in your current area). Solution: Delete character and start again...3 to 4 hours down the drain. FRUSTRATING in the EXTREME!
Basically this game isn't hard...it's just mega frustrating. And frustration is the ONE THING that I don't want in a GAME! If I want frustration and pointlessness, I'll go to work...thank you.
Comments
Nice job... I have to agree with you in most cases here. It is very frustrating at times. And I hate it when the mob you are fighting can, basically, have unlimited spells and doesn't seem to be affected by the movement penalty.
Quick edit here...
I wish they would put the HPs of mobs down to where they should be... And characters as well.
Hmm, iv'e had no problems grouping at all. There are so many people in fact that you can barely get aroud the marketplace due to the lag. It could be the server you chose I guess.
I also disagree on the levelling. I got to level 5 in under a week. As far as being poor at level 3, your doing something wrong. I had well over 100 plat at level 3, with nice modded equipment.
This one a long time have I watched. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh! Excitement. Heh! A Jedi craves not these things. (turning to hadz) You are reckless!
Ok seriously, I think you should remove the grind from your "QUESTGRINDFEST" thought process. Don't always play for the next quest. And don't play to level. Just play. Have fun. Enjoy yourself. Enjoy the experience of your character.
Just my 2¢
so...
I think you misunderstand what he's saying. DDO's gameplay focuses on questing, each quest is individually designed, and so far that has made for some fun and unique expierences each time I go into a quest. Play to have fun, and try to lose the preconceived notions of what an MMO is. Would you rather have really good, fun quests or a bunch of half-baked ideas all mashed together to keep you paying that monthly fee?
HELLO WORLD
Nope...I totally understood what he was saying...
The thing is THERE IS NOTHING OTHER THAN THE QUESTS to experience.
I do MOSTLY enjoy the quests (mainly because of the teamwork aspect of them), but if combat/questing/sneaking/grouping/trap-disabling/etc is flawed...THAT IS ALL THERE IS TO DO IN DDO...so I can't experience something else!
The thing is...the quests aren't even that good...or special...or FUN...
It's just a bunch of mobs (which my fully combat equipped warrior can't hit 30% of the time) in a bunch of corridors with a couple of traps thrown in (which 30% of the time FULLY KITTED OUT ROGUES can't even disable, which often leads to an unavoidable party wipe).
This does not make a game that I can ENJOY, nor would I call it in any way FUN.
Play to have fun ?
I believe the OP tried to explain why he CANNOT have fun in DDO.
Broken game mechanics stay broken, regardless of whether you have any "preconceived notions of what an MMO is".
i agree with you man,i'm tired of waiting 15 min to get a group, and once i get a group it's a bad group.don't get me wrong i enjoy playing the game but some times...i just want to smash my head on the keyboard in frustration.
Play to have fun ?
I believe the OP tried to explain why he CANNOT have fun in DDO.
Broken game mechanics stay broken, regardless of whether you have any "preconceived notions of what an MMO is".
Okay, and if he can't have fun in DDO, he should play something else he does have fun in. That's what games are about, it's a pretty simple concept.
Oh, and that's nto to mention most of the stuff he mentioned isn't broken, it's just the way the game was intended to be played.
HELLO WORLD
To me this game stopped being fun after they put in the 4.5 patch. Befor that patch you could actually solo SOME of the quest even if you died once or twice. I thought they had the difficulty set just right so that it was hard by yourself but not impossible, but then they had to go overkill with the 4.5 patch making nearly all the quest too hard to solo anymore.
It seem like after that they just started restricting gameplay more and more until it was more frustrating than fun to play.
edit: spelling ftw!
The Brave Do Not Fear The Grave
Actually I never said it was BROKEN...I said it was frustrating. And, while I think it mimics PnP D&D rules well, I think that those rules aren't all that suitable for an MMO.
That being said (and my initial post notwithstanding)...when I get a play-period where I find little frustration I really do enjoy the game. The problem is it's ALMOST there but not quite. It's close...and I wish it could be better. Thus my initial post (which I also put on the DDO forums) was a plea for a fix, rather than a complaint with an "I'm leaving" attached.