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7 tips for a great 7 day trial experience!
Jypsy
Member Posts: 60
Heyas all,
I decided to make this little guide since we have gotten a lot of responses from people that want to give the game a fair shot, but get annoyed by those that are acting immature in early pick-up groups.
Here are some tips that hopefully will make your experience better!
1. Have a friend try the game with you.
As has been mentioned in many posts, DDO is a group based game which quickly gets very difficult to solo.
If you and a friend coordinate yourselves to be in the same group, you will have a much better time than with all random people.
2. Turn Voice Chat On
Even if you do not have a microphone, go into your options and turn voice chat on so you can hear what those that do have a microphone are saying....such as your friendly neighborhood rogue stopping and yelling "TRAP". The difference in the time it takes to say TRAP compared to type it is astounding and may save you the hassle of being decapitated by a spinning blade death trap!
3. Be Discerning.
When joining a group, take a look at the names, and think about how seriously they are taking their own trial.
For example, if you encounter a rogue with the name "ILIKETOTANKZ", you more than likely want to avoid that player, the same with most players that have names you would find in a schoolyard written on the walls. A lot can be said in a name, if someone decides on some throwaway name, they likely will not think twice on feeding you to the nearest kobold nest. That all being said, I have met some fantastic players with names I personally would be hesitant to group with, such as Fatherdeath, bluntsmoke, and loura croft.
4. Know Your Role.
This tip should be for everyone. This game is unlike many MMOs in the idea that each class has its own viable playstyles and its own ideas on how it can survive!
Rogues: Should be in constant communication with the party, and usually sneaking ahead when not in battle, to check for secret doors, traps, and such. When in battle, rogues tend to be squishy and are best to be in the back with a bow, or throwing daggers. Currently this would be, in my opinion, the most required class for any long dungeon romp. ALWAYS HAVE LOCKPICKS ON YOU! If you think you might have too many, buy some more, then you will just about have enough!
Fighters: Belong in front, right behind the rogue, to take the aggro off them ASAP. Fighters need to be aware of where the monsters aggression is, and how the group is doing in general.
Clerics: Clerics are difficult to play, since spell points do not regenerate automatically. Clerics need to be in back, away from battle, and doing their best to keep the main tank healed, while keeping a close watch on her Spell points. Do not be afraid to use wands and only get into the thick of things when you are going to use turn undead!
Sorcerers: Sorcerers are a damage dealer who does best ahead of the healer, but behind the main battle. Sorcerers have two key bonuses that make them desirable, firstly, they can heal warforged very well, saving Spell points from being wasted by the cleric, secondly they have the most spellpoints of the spellcasters, so they can afford to launch more spells than the rest, without becoming a hazard. Just be sure to watch your spell points and stay away from a glut of meat eating monsters.
Wizards: Wizards have more spell selection, but less spell points. Before leaving into a dungeon, discuss what spells should be ready with your group so you do not find you need chill touch when you took burning hands.
Again, stay in back, and conserve spell points for the big nasties.
Rangers: Rangers are a unique class that can be built several ways, some build them for melee, some for ranged. I personally play my ranger as a long ranged damage dealer, that can also run in to save the cloth-wearing spellcasters from certain and unpleasant doom. Whichever way you build your ranger, closer to fighter, or closer to rogue, keep an eye on your abilities that are oft overlooked but come in handy, such as sneak, and wild empathy.
Bards: Bards are secondary clerics in most situations and their songs can make the difference between life and a disheartening party wipe! They follow more along the rogue lines but are fantastic with a bow as well.
Barbarians: Barbarians need to be in constant contact with the cleric to stay alive, yet remain berserked when needed. Barbarians deal a lot of damage, but take a lot of damage as well, so they tend to drop faster than most melee classes. barbarians are often the main tank, so they belong in front, right in the middle of drooling nasties.
Paladins: Paladins tend to be the swiss army knife of the group, often used as a secondary healer (or primary in a pinch), main or secondary tank, or a turn undead machine. Paladins usually fare best near the main battle, but close enough to get aggression off the spellcasters in back. Paladins need to be aware of their surroundings and enemy types to really be effective.....
These are just ideas for the classes, and by no means a comprehensive guide. Your milage may differ.
5. Take your time.
Unless you have a really good idea of what is where and this is the 5th time you have run the dungeon, take your time. Let the rogue disarm traps and find secret doors. You get more experience this way as well!
Also, if it is breakable, BREAK IT! Yes! be a hooligan and destroy that basement full of grog! Just beware of the barrels with XXX on them, they tend to blow up on you! The more you break, the more XP bonus you get.
6. Be Prepared.
Spend that hard earned gold and platinum on things you will need.
The worst thing is to spend hours in a dungeon and be stuck at the end without a lockpick, or be the last man standing when the rest of the party is incapacitated, and be without a Healing kit.
My suggestion: Have TOO MANY arrows or lockpicks on you, and you might be ok.
As for healing kits, and repair kits, a stack of 20 each should be fine, since if you need more than that in a dungeon, you really need to rethink your strategy.
Healing potions are always a plus, since often your primary healer will become overwhelmed, and a healing shrine may be a ways off. If you can use them, keep some wands on you for when you run out of spell points!
7. Have fun with others.
The biggest reason to play the game isn't to get the phat lewt, its not to get level 10 and PVP (yet), its much like the Pen and paper game, where you are there to have a good time with some friends, new or old.
If you find a good guild or a group of friends, your playing experience can become one that will last you, and make up for any costs you have to pay for the game! There is nothing like the feeling of reading on a message board, or hearing in chat "Hey, we should get (your name here), he is a fantastic (your class here)."
Anyways, those are my 7 tips for a great 7 day trial!
If the game is not for you, It is not for you.
This isn't WoW, and its not Guild Wars, its Dungeons and Dragons Online, for better or worse.
If anyone else has tips for new players, please feel free to post them and hopefully it'll help some people have a better experience!
~Jypsy, Grand Phoob of the universe.
Comments
8. Be ready to wait 30+ minutes for a group. With their diminishing number of subscribers, the waits for grouping have gotten worse and worse. After I left a few weeks ago, a friend still plays. He said it can be slow and hard to find a group even during peak times on some nights. For a game that requires you to group, this is nothing less than a downward spiral.
9. Even casual players will run out of things to do within 4-8 weeks. Unless you plan on making a lot of characters so you can repeat the same exact quests over and over again, you're going to run out of content pretty quickly. The level cap is reached pretty quickly and there is nothing more to do without more content and PvP. I guess you could always sit in a tavern and try to get people to RP (good luck with that).
10. Be prepared for repitition. Most players only want to do the dungeons with the most exp reward for time spent. This means that people want to repeat the Waterworks and Shan-to-kor quests over and over again. Sure, there are a few groups that may want to do other quests, but your chance of finding them in a pick-up group is pretty slim. And with guild memberships dropping quickly, there is little option to do anything but the major quests.
11. Just don't waste your money. All the fanboys complain about this sentiment time and time again, but if you're interested in instanced content, and a game that offers more content and a PvP system, go play Guild Wars. There is not monthly fee and there is plenty to do (especially if you're interested in PvP). DDO doesn't have much to qualify it as D&D, and it has little to make it considerable as an MMORPG either.
I'm not just "bashing" the game, nor am I trolling the forums. There are many legitimate points that argue for the many cons of DDO. Most people you will talk to about the game dislike(d) it and left, which is why Turbine is now grasping at straws trying to add solo content post-release, PvP, and Drow(which makes no sense since you can only been good and neutral). Of course, if you're interested, test the free trial for yourself. Just keep in mind that the "fun" of the game changes dramatically after the first 2 weeks. Most people begin to see the troubles with the game, and it's not worth the $50 to play for 2 weeks.
Sigh, you are both welcome to your opinions, but this post was simply me trying to help out the new people that want to give it a shot. I have been playing more or less since launch, and still having a great time, and our guild numbers are growing, not dwindling.
Yeah, i do agree though that there is a wait for groups usually, but thats how it is in most games as well, but again, in most games, you can solo or craft while waiting.
Just telling people "just avoid this game" really doesnt help. It doesn't hurt to try it out and judge for themselves.
~Jypsy, Grand Phoob of the universe.
While well stated, amazingly enough the seven tips listed by the OP would be good advice for anyone trying a trial of any MMO game. My suggestion would be to take the tips laid out by the OP and try a game that has a world build around it. Unless you enjoy roleplaying as an exterminator, that is.
You see, there's no persistant world in DDO. There's one city ... Stormreach. Sadly, Stormreach is nothing more than a city with a severe kobold infestation problem. In DDO, you play the role of the Orkin man. You wait for a call, then when you get one you go to the house, go to the basement, and kill the pests. When all of the pests are killed, you get paid (in XP). If you don't kill all of the pests, you don't get paid (no XP for mobs killed, just for quest completion). Once your job is done, you go to the tavern to heal up while you wait for another call. Unfortunately, more often than not the next call is from the same place you just came from, where the pests in question have somehow managed to re-establish themselves is exactly the same spots where they had been the last time you went there.
And that's just one of the issues with DDO. The community is by turns infantile and elitist. The servers are becoming more barren by the day, making looking for a group to join it's own special kind of timesink (since there is no crafting to help pass the time, all you can do while LFG is sit in the tavern of your choice and wait to run Waterworks or STK for the umpteenth time).
If you do not have the ability or desire to use the VOIP client, you will be shunned and tossed from groups. If you roll up a Warforged character, you will be shunned (oddly enough, by people trying to use "I'm just roleplaying" as an excuse) and tossed from groups.
Gameplay is fun for about 2 weeks. By then, you come to the relization that you will be running the same crawls over and over again. Why, you ask? What a wise trial player you are! Well, you'll be running the same crawls over and over again because the vast majority of those playing DDO are min-maxing as hard as they can so that they can get to 10.4. Then at that point, they can say, "Yippee, I'm 10.4! I can ... ummmm ... well ... errrrr ... re-roll and do it again, I guess."
As a single player co-op game, DDO is okay. As a MMO that charges $15 a month, it's simply a terrible effort. While researching the game, take a quick look at the other games charging $15 a month. List the features they have.
Then don't take anyone's word for it. Download the trial yourself, trial player. Play it for seven days. See what all DDO doesn't have that other games charging $15 a month (or less) have.
Then play Guild Wars (without a monthly fee) or wait for Dungeon Runners to come out (free to download and play) if you find you prefer a game that's 90%+ instanced.
Those are great tips for someone to do while doing the trial. Even if the game is not your cup of tea, you will have a pretty good time for free. Most people have fun playing this game, its just the amount of content that tends to be the main point of criticism.
I would add 1 more tip.
Sadly for this game it is necessary to have a much better time if your part of an active fun guild. This of course helps with any game, but especiially for DDO. If you can try to join one with players that you seem to be grouping with regularly. DDO is not nearly as fun when you are searching for pickup groups with players you do not know.
I think people should make the most of the free week, but also keep in mind going in that this game has very narrow appeal. Some people will love the game, most won't even make a full seven days of it. I loathe the game, but I can see why some people like it, so it's worth a try.
A major pre-requisite for enjoying DDO is to be someone who wants to group all the time. Then you need to find good groups with in the game. Bad groups can make what should be enjoyable quests a horror show.
If you are the type of MMO player who would prefer to do everyting in a group, this game is at least worth a shot. If, like me, you are the type of player who spends less than 50% of their MMO time grouping and sometimes just prefers to go days playing solo, this game will not be a match.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
In America I have bad teeth. If I lived in England my teeth would be perfect.
I havent yet played this game, but I was looking into playing the trial. I hope one day the solo players realize that Diablo 2 is still active and they make their way back.
Oh yeah. Do not forget to stay away from Vangaurd please! Thanks!
Thank you for listening
IMO DDO is suited to PnP players who would only get together to play 1 or 2 times a week there simply isn't enough content to suite the playstyle of the majority of player out there. If played 1 or 2 times a week the content is probably enough for at least a couple of months, however if I wanted to play DnD with friends online i'd probably go with NWN or NWNII since there is no subscription plan.
Simply put a game that expects a premiium subscription price per month for a world that is largely instanced and allows for little exploration isn't getting anything else from me other than the price of the box (Which I do own).
If Turbine can only deliver new modules every couple of months and even then modules that currently do not raise the level cap and therefore force people into rerolls to play the game they need to go to a different pricing plan because at 15$ a month that game is NOT value for money. Instead turbine need to adopt a freeplay approach and chartge for modules maybe in the 15$ - 25$ range.
I did have hopes for the game but after playing it for a while was totally unimpressed with the game.
Like it or not WoW changed the culture of MMO's many people with limited lesiure time now expect to be able to log on to a game and do something without having to spend time searching for groups, even with that said WoW has also generated an ongoing war regarding the ability of a game to cater for different playstyles.
My first game that really hooked me was DACO so beleive me i do know the value and fun of grouping (With the right people) but i also know that if a game made it so that the only way I could get anything done was to group that game would not get any further monies from me.
Trying to make people play the way YOU think they should play a game is not only arrogant, but if game companies subscribe to this view then they and you are the ones that suffer from reduced income and therefor reduced fund to further development of the games you follow.
Bottom line - Telling people how to play a game may make you feel superior but in the end it will only reduce the number of people you can choose to play with, a game nowadays should and must support many different playstyes and support multiple ways to get to the 'end' game (It is a GAME and not Real Life).
The NPC provided were ONLY made for people who couldn't find a group during the low hours of the day and late night. They were not made for people who CHOOSE to not want to group with people. I wish those people who just fest up and be honest...they buy mmorpgs because they want to buy console-game rpgs since they can be beaten no less then 3 to 5 days. MMORPGs give players who want a console-game experience hours of game play.
That's why I like force grouping. It snapping people out of that delusion, they are playing a console game. And that's the one thing DDO did right.
Like it or not WoW changed the culture of MMO's many people with limited lesiure time now expect to be able to log on to a game and do something without having to spend time searching for groups, even with that said WoW has also generated an ongoing war regarding the ability of a game to cater for different playstyles.
My first game that really hooked me was DACO so beleive me i do know the value and fun of grouping (With the right people) but i also know that if a game made it so that the only way I could get anything done was to group that game would not get any further monies from me.
Trying to make people play the way YOU think they should play a game is not only arrogant, but if game companies subscribe to this view then they and you are the ones that suffer from reduced income and therefor reduced fund to further development of the games you follow.
Bottom line - Telling people how to play a game may make you feel superior but in the end it will only reduce the number of people you can choose to play with, a game nowadays should and must support many different playstyes and support multiple ways to get to the 'end' game (It is a GAME and not Real Life).
1. MMO still force you to group. If they did not MMO forced group at some point, they would lose money. Understand that console game make money by making players pay high prices for games they can beat in no less then 5 days. MMORPG get their money by making the players play a month's worth of gaming, charging them the same price as a console game to buy the MMORPG and getting a little extra money while doing it. If MMO offer allowed your way through the whole game MMORPGs would lose money money quick as the adventure gamer would be able to reach max level no less a week and through the content quick.
2. WoW is 90% group-oriented and people have been asking for solo for a while even before WoW came along. Instance and PvP, which make up the majority of the content are group-oriented. World PvP is almost non-existent thanks to the increase penalty for civilian kills and ganking. You can only solo outside quest that are non-elite. Many people who ask for solo are console-game players or people who think they are too elite to join up with anyone else due to past bad experiences and/or the fact they are impatient.
3. Bottoline: Don't play MMORPGs and always games to cater to solo play.
You know, its unusual for me to be siding with CaptainRPG, but he is 100% right, a MMO is for grouping. If you pay 14.99 just to solo, why are you playing an mmo and not a game like Oblivion?
I understand that mmos need some solo content for when you are not in the mood to group, but in my opinion, the more that groups are forced to work together, the better.
~Jypsy, Grand Phoob of the universe.
I've posted this so many times and in so many places I have it in a Word document ... lol. I've had to modify it a little since Oblivion came out, as that's the closest thing to a single player MMO that's been released as of yet. But it still has its flaws, for me at least.
When you play a single player game, you are in for a linear experience. You will be led down a path from beginning to end. While some games like NWN or KoTOR make it more interesting by creating a branch here or there, when it's all said and done you've moved in a linear progression from start to finish just the way the developers have intended you to.
Compare that to a persistant world game, say EQ. If I decide today want to try to take my level 1 charatcer into a level 30 dungeon just to see how far down he can sneak before he gets killed, I can do that. Back when EQ was new, we would do things like have a bunch of folks all create lvl 1 gnomes and race from Steamfont to Qeynos just to see who could get there first. Or, conversely, take a group of level 60+ characters into a level 15 dungeon just to see how fast we could clean it out.
Those things aren't linear at all. The designers of the game did not intend for those things to be done. But those types of things are some of the most fun times I've had as a gamer in years.
Now, why would I play a linear single player game the way some developer makes me play it when I could play a MMO game in an alinear way the way I want to play it?
The only thing that makes me play single player games anymore is a compelling storyline. I want to complete the level to advance the story. Halo is a fine example of this. I really wanted to see where the story was going.
I'm not a hermit ... I enjoy grouping as well. Some days, though, after being fed to the wolves all day I just want to bite the wolves back. Alone. I'm not in any mood to be around other people. My guildies know this, and understand it. Other folks may not, so it's better for all involved that I'm off doing something by myself while chatting with my guildies. Hunting puts me in a better mood, as does chatting with my friends. In an MMO, I can do both. In Oblivion, I can't.
And there you have it. If you don't agree with it, fine. If you don't get it, that's okay too. And I'm not speaking for anyone else but me. But remember before you fire back ... you asked the question.
Funny...that's one of the things I loved about EQ1. The compeition was fierce.
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
Funny...that's one of the things I loved about EQ1. The compeition was fierce.
Dude and you are a godsend. You nailed it right on the f#%king head. You reminded us why MMORPGs are fun in the place and why soloing doesn't belong.
As of matter a fact, I take back everything I said about soloers and their reason why because this is the reason why they don't like force grouping so they won't have to compete with us or cooperate with whom they deem losers.
Never had a hard time soloing or grouping in EQ. Got a druid to 70 almost 100% solo, and got a cleric on up there (can't remember exactly where he ended up
) almost 100% grouped.
The thing was the whole explorable world idea. Norrath was a big enough place that groups and soloers could coexist. Sure there were overlaps, and sure I either had my group stepped on by a quadding wizard or my druid stepped on by a group from time to time. But there were enough other spots to go to that it just wasn't that big a deal.
I even had the druid stepped on by other soloers. Frogs in the Plane of Storms, for example. A necro could kill individual frogs faster than I could, but my charmed frog could kill faster than the necro's pet. I never had fight about it ... whoever could kill faster got the spot and the other moved on.
Elysians is another example. A lot of times in that case, though, the soloers ended up grouping to kill faster. That wouldn't work in Storms ... only 7 spawns doesn't leave a lot with two sets of dots stacked, and the giants summoned.
"You will not evade me!" is not something you want to hear unless you're wearing plate and have a healer with you.