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Dungeons & Dragons Online: Q&A #9
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
Victor Wachter, the Community Manager of Dungeons and Dragons Online, took the time to answer five new questions as our bi-weekly series continues.
;) MMORPG.com: Players are very concerned that developers do not listen to their feedback during beta. How often would you say that Turbine listens to its players?
Victor Wachter: Were being very active in listening to our players. Theyre our best source of information on the game. Over the course of Beta, we have frequently looked to them for feedback on gameplay elements and more information on issues that they have encountered. A good example of this is the recent changes we made to stealth and invisibility. Our Beta players gave us lots of great feedback about the changes and we used that to further refine the system. What resulted was a good compromise and I think thats indicative of our commitment to taking player feedback. Our plan is to stay in touch with the community and communicate back to them what our plans are in response to their feedback. Weve tackled a number of issues during Beta with help from the playerbase. Weve spent extra time researching problems that have been reported. Our business gives us so many different opportunities to find out what our players are feeling about our game, and we try and take full advantage of them. |
The full interview is available here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
MMO games played or tested: EQ, DAoC, Archlord, Auto Assault, CoH, CoV, EQ2, EVE, Guild Wars, Hellgate: London, Linneage II, LOTRO, MxO, Planetside, SWG, Sword of the New World, Tabula Rasa, Vanguard, WWIIOL, WOW, Age of Conan
I have played beta and this game is so far so actual games with more time on line, example WOW or Everquest, GW. Probably, If this game wasn't suported by D&D trademark. Their time life not exceded more than few months. Sorry, i wished you developed a great game but you wasted your opportunity.
Obiously, i won't to spend my money in this game. I was waitng a long time for this DDO and Turbine doesn't reach my expectative.
Sorry guys,
This latest Q&A continues to lower my confidence in this game. I agree with the above poster that with the limited world and instancing, it just wont hold my attention that long like SWG did or WOW. I think it will be fun those first few months but the staying power is very limited.
I was hoping for a overhaul, maybe some new thinking, but this new Q&A does not give me much hope. I'm sorry to say that I too will not be playing D&D. Its a shame, I grew up with the PnP and was looking forward to this online, but I most likely just get NWN 2 for my fix.
Really to bad i cannot cancel my preorder at Gamestop anymore.
After playing the stress tests and the beta i do not like this game at all and i had much hope because it was based in the D&D ruleset.
The combat system is boring and experience only by doing quests is a very bad choice.
I am afraid this will be another flop for Turbine after AC2.
Fully instanced? People want a world to explore, alone or with friends. We want choices. That's the main mistake with alot of these MMORPG's, they limit the players choices to an extreme.
AGhh.. i really wanted this game to be good...
Add one more to the disappointment list. The dungeon crawls were boring, though true - many lower levels of games are. Storyline was OK, but there should be a little solo content. I like grouping with people, but not all the time. This game makes it a necessity. Stress test did not hold my interest long enough to play all the time I had available to me. Not true of WoW, or others I have played in.
For one more time let your madness run with mine.
I will admit, the changes he mentions were definitely seen in the beta. However, much of the ado at the boards was about the solo content and the repeat instancing. Keith has not changed his mind since one of the early interviews. Making this as much like the tabletop as possible in a mmo is the best they can do. His idea of repeating to "mastering" the dungeon falls short of several options. Strictly dungeons only was disappointing and claustrophobic. I would have thot tho allowing for the sights and sounds of such adventures would include trips through forests, caves, tunnels, draped in intrigue and danger every step of the way. Imagine it! Being able to actually SEE what the whole group of you is going through and being acted out on the screen! But alas, my expectations were too high.
As a stealther tho I did enjoy the low level dungeons solo tremendously. Doing them again and again tho really didnt appeal. Every time you went in, the mobs were in the same place, the traps were in the same place, no real "challenge to master" at all.
They may have listened to a few important changes that needed to be done anyway but they arent listening to what they dont want to hear.
That seemed a needlessly aggressive interview... Professionalism!
Yeah you can tell the interviewer didn't like DDO but tries to recover at the end
With an unfortunate rest system that is very stifling, and poorly limited customization and frankly over-poweredness of the low level game, this is one that I will watch for six months to a year and then maybe look at purchasing.
I know I'm a bit spoiled with City of Heroes/Villians which really allows customization, but the lack of coloring armors (and adding tabbards and cloaks/capes that can be colored) the hope that "high level armor" will allow for their "distinct" appearance is frankly appalling.
I can't believe that any modern MMO doesn't have at least *that* much customization.
Arthur Hansen
It's a shame that a game with so much potential gets pushed out the door too early and the developers defend it with some lame standard interviews. But I guess it is too much to ask for a bit more honesty.
"Of course we listen to our fans, thats why there is still no dual-wield button possible on the shortcut bar and you still don't see who you are trading with. Oh and we even added some more annoyances before the fans even asked for it! Buy now and get 200% more lag"
www.gLitterbug.org
I guess I must noy be playing the same game as the folks giving this bad press.
I had initial doubts about the game, and I believe it has some areas to improve on. But look at the goal they were attempting to accomplish prior to making a judgment.
Turbine is attempting to capture the FEEL of the Pen and Paper D&D game in an online persistant world. In a D&D Game you do not have random person X running around killing the same monsters you were sent to kill, you also are normally on a quest of some sort. In this they have actually done a good job.
Comparing D&D online to other MMOs is difficult, other MMOs were not trying to capture the spirit of the tabletop/Pen and Paper game. I heard a quote from I believe it was a Wizards of the Coast Rep on a show called "Icons" comparing Pen and Paper games to MMOs, it was something like:
"In a Pen and Paper game you and your friends are the Heroes sent out to stop the bad guys, you go on an adventure and get the rewards for that... In an MMO everyone is TRYING to be the hero."
Now from where I stand Turbine has done an excellent job of capturing the spirit of the D&D adventure, people that played the Pen and Paper game know that random people do not just wander into your adventure and start killing creatures, or taking the items that the party earned.
I guess my final thoughs on this are that I liked the game in Beta and Stress test so much that I pre-ordered. It seems to accomplish what it set out to at this point...
Just my opinion
Madcap23
After reading all these bad post I was somekind of afraid,saying to myself that I`ve pre-ordered a game that I`ll will not like.But as the last post gives me some hope.
Now,my question is,are all these people judging the game for what it is or what it is not?As for myself I don`t want to play a clone of WoW or any other MMO.So I`ll play for 3 months to see the outcome and how Turbine will handle the thing.
In the land of Predators,the lion does not fear the jackals...
I actually enjoyed a lot that beta had to offer, however the game still felt incomplete at close of beta.
BAD STUFF
Combat was good, but WAYYYYY too fast (twitch combat indeed). Once you fight skeletons, it begs to ask, when did Skeletons get jackrabbit DNA? Really wish they'd slow combat down just a little.
Quest Instancing; The griping on this is way overblown. Yes, you can (and may need to) repeat quests, but if you actually do all the quests in the game and take the time to enjoy the settings & challenges DDO offers a lot of fun. I do think it is important that these games also provide an outdoors area for players to wander, which is lacking here. Granted that I don't want to walk forever to get from point A to B, but on those days were I don't really want to be in a party it would be a good place to solo.
Loot; The Beta started off with players being able to gain really good loot. By the end of beta, I hadn't replaced any of my main gear in over a month. It concerns me as while my gear was decent, certainly not Uber.
Pawnshops; Best idea on the Beta forum was to move pawnbrokers into the Bigtop. This would remove a bunch of unneccessary walking from house to house to house, AND with all players going to check the shops in the tent you'd get a feel that there were more than a dozen people playing the game.
Lag; It was Beta. They may have it resolved when the game goes live. Guessing they'll pay out for more bandwidth for the release date.
Rangers; Poor lads are totally borked. Mostly due to the ineffectiveness of archery during the entire beta. If only combat were just a tad slower and archers just a little faster on the draw..
Paladins; Also felt like an afterthought. At end of Beta they were much better, but still not completely defined. Turn Undead? What's that? Smite? Why?
Character Creation; Compared to CoH/CoV is quite drab. D&D may have "30 years of experience", but the design and execution of feats from Pen n Paper is pretty sucky IMHO. This is something Turbine probably could have done a bit better than WotC/Hasbro. The Feat tables are, and have been full of chaff since it's implimenation. Snake Blood or Cleave? Hmmmm.. Facial details, pick one of 4 scars. Um, yeah, I'll get right on that.
Alignment; Seemingly has absolutely no effect in play, excepting for people that are Neutral. They get access to better gear. It would be nice to actually have interpersonal skills actually have an impact on NPC's.
Items; During early Beta I'd managed to get a Ring of Featherfall. At late Beta players were getting items of Featherfall that had spell charges on them. That is so abhorrent to me that I decided it was the straw which broke the camel's back as to buying the game. Whee, I'm falling a 1000 feet, I should probably activate my widget of FF. Ooops, too late *splat*. Stupid.
Dungeons; A partial knock. Each is handcrafted (which is cool). Downside is that all the traps/shrines are consistent (which is bad). Once you know where a trap/shrine is, it is always the same type of trap in the same location. If you're in a group and one person has done this Quest numerous times, people will just zerg through and destroy the gaming fun for new players that don't know it. You know there's a problem when the Fighters are always running in front of the Rogues. A little Randomosity (tm) of trap and shrine locations would be very welcome.
GOOD STUFF
With all it's shortcomings, I freely admit to having a good time during Beta.
Pace; Even with twitch combat, each dungeon crawl takes time and gaining a level has significance. A lot of impatient people will likely not like this game for that reason alone. The good news is that the people that do stick around will be having a great time playing in Eberron.
Warforged; Disliked by a lot of Beta players. I'd played with these on a few occasions and found them to be fun due to their differences. To play with them, you have to step outside the box a bit and think different. We formed a complete party of WF and had a hoot. Warforged should have their own Inn (garage?) in town, someplace they can get away from the "Fleshies". hehe
Graphics; The world looks pretty damn good depending on your video card of course. Integrated graphics on your PC? Sorry to hear that =P
It's D&D; Mostly. I think they did a pretty decent job keeping it tied to the source material. Though they could have evolved it a bit more IMHO. Less a fault of Turbine, more a fault of D&D's stagnation from 2.0
Grouping; Never had to wait for more than 5 minutes to find a group to play with. The search tool for player/party were effective though perhaps a bit shallow. Want to know the race of who/what you're recruiting?
Keybinds & VoiceChat; Greatly implimented and better support than the other online games I play (are you listening City of Heroes?). Their implimentation of VoiceChat was still being fleshed out, but when it works is really good.
Complexity; As a player of CoV/CoH, often I find myself wanting more. In CoH you spend the majority of your time running around and bashing the bad guys, which feels very vanilla after awhile. With DDO, each player's abilities have more weight. Rogue, Cleric, Fighter, Paladin, Barbarian, etc.. Each archetype is valued, and a party can only consist of up to 6 players.
Group Game; By design it's meant to be a group game, not a solo game. Sorry solo players, but this isn't the game for you. It's the game for people like me who came from Pen and Paper, who enjoy social interaction and late-night gatherings with your friends around a pizza and soda. If you're that interested in solo content, why are you in a MMORPG in the first place?
============
DDO will do well, though their first couple of months live will probably hit them hard as I predict a lot of people griping about paying for a game that's still in beta. They'll get my money and monthly fee at the first major release assuming that DDO shows signs of evolving for the better.
I wouldn't worry too much Ngeldu5t, DDO is a good game, but the problem is that there is still very much to desire. I don't critisize it because I want it to be another WoW, hell no, at least not in gameplay terms, but the game is far from being a polished one. My main gripe lies with the game getting pushed out the door early, probably due some internal needs. I haven't played much betas so far, but I did play plenty of release games and no matter how many people claim that no game is really ready at release, most of them were way more polished than ddo currently is. I personally can't wait for release, but since I have not preordered I will rather wait and see how it develops and jump in once it is a game that is really release-worthy.
The dungeons in the game are surely nice and I bet you'll have a good time playing them(if you have a group that is). But I think we as players should not simply praise a game and defend it all that easy as a lot of people and especially the fanboys do. In the end it just shows that we put up with a game that is less polished and has less scope than it should have.
If DDO was a LAN-playable single player game that promised to deliver a cheap expansion every 2-3 months it would probably have got half the bad press. Fact is that it claims to be an MMORPG, (something that you could not put Guild Wars in really either, but nobody minds since it has no monthly fee anyways), but it clearly lacks the things it would need to justify calling it that. I don't talk about 100 man raid dungeons here, but a living breathing world populated by real people, rather than a bleak city where you only stay to rest or get your reward for the instance you just did. So personally I can very much understand why people would rather wait for a Neverwinter Nights 2, which is bound to get lots of user created content for free, than playing DDO which is imo very similar, but without polish and more expensive.
All the being made to capture the Pen and Paper feel talk doesn't justify this game being as it is. But even if you set all this aside and just look at it at a technical level it simply is not done enough to be released yet.
www.gLitterbug.org
I'm pretty much in the opposite category. I was in the stress-test and found it to be a pretty game that missed several important markers.
The many-armed-monster at every tavern door just shows how ham-handed they are in some of their implementation. The total ban on regaining hit points/magic outside of taverns or specific "save" spots in the modules thems totally repulses me. Why do I have to leave the adventure to regain just enough hit points to be able to defeat the lone kobold?
The emphasis on "must group" is not something you should force on MMOs. Even Cryptic has finally cottoned to this, by making Arch Villains become just Elite Bosses that can be soloed. Reward grouping, don't punish soloers.
The essence of their "loot" equipment as defining items is, frankly, stupid. At the high level, almost everyone will try to get the 'best' equipment. Equipment is not going to be defining anything other than "Hi, I'm such and such a level." A simple coloring on armor robes (something Neverwinter Nights has had for years!) would add greatly to individuality.
All of these are game-stopping reason for me not to buy this game right off the mark.
While I do understand the complaints about not being able to regen HP in an adventure, I point back to the fact that this is an attempt at making a MMO out of the Pen and Paper D&D game. When playing D&D you do not regen magic or hit points by simply standing around, you must find a safe spot to rest to recover your hit and magic points.
It might have been better to offer players to ability to camp/rest anywhere, adding in an eliment of random/wandering encounters... But that is not the direction they chose. (Would have been a good idea though).
The idea of gaining HP/magic back in an inn is as old as the game... Just got done with an adventure? Go to the inn to rest up and divide up the treasure!
Solo play... I am with you to a point on this one... It would be nice to have some additional Soloable adventures in the game... However once again D&D is all about a Party (for the most part) where you need different archtypes to make an adventure doable.
Let me clarify my position here... Even with the short comings I see in the game (Customisation, lack of Solo play, and a few other glitches) I still consider this game worth playing, much more so than some of the other games on the market... Now will my opinion be the same three, six or nine months from now? Maybe, then again maybe not... But as I said I am going to give it a chance and see how it works out.
As alway Just my Opinions
Madcap23
I guess most people actually agree on the shortcomings of the game, some just have a higher annoyance threshold and patience. Friends and me are still playing the beta and watching how it improves over time, which will make us decide on getting the game or not. The play experience surely is different to the monster bashing only in other MMO's, which is the main reason I am playing the game at all.
Having to use the rest-shrine to be tactically of help is a good thing, but imo a real good system would be to have to set up a resting camp and then get random ambushes depending on where you set up the camp etc, just like it has been done successfully in so many other old ddo rpg's. Implementing setting traps and the like could have helped tremendously increasing the feel of being in a dangerous spot and therefore making resting hard, but just putting in rest shrines was the easy way to control the players.
Turbine should just really listen to the testers instead of claiming to do so in an interview while praising the twitch combat system as revelation in gaming when all it means is that skeletons do the breakdance.
www.gLitterbug.org
All they need is to add some henchmen like Guildwars did. Oh, and some PvP like guildwars did. Oh, and not p2p like guildwars did. Then I would consider buying it.
Like it was said before, it would play better as a singleplayer/small server game like NWN than a MMORPG. Actually, in my opinion its just an overpriced CORPG.
Storyline is too linear, couldn't explore further not because monsters were too hard but because NPC wouldn't let me past the docks because I didn't complete a previous quest. I can expect this from a singleplayer game, but from a so called MMORPG?
When playing, the guys who have been in the dungeon before kept running ahead and basically blow and go through the level. No roleplaying, no tactical fighting. Just run up and start spam attacking till nothing is moving. And after a few times doing the same dungeon I found mysel unconsiousely doing the same thing. I mean seriousely, after the 5th or sixth time through a dungeon doing the same thing over and over it just got boring. But not being able to continue because I can not find anyone to group with to do the quest I need to do to advance. So I join another group that is doing the quest I have already done a dozen times over.
I know I will get flamed for this but this game is basically Guildwars minus the Henchman and PvP, and add the LFG, dungeons, and monthly fee.
I point back to the source material again to counter the issues you point out Kilaan, not trying to flame you at all here...
First PvP does not fit well into the source material, the game was designed around the idea that a group of people got together to do something heroic... I have yet to find a single person that went to an officially sanctioned D&D event and PK'ed and got away with it.
Secont the story line is linear, you are correct. But your character is a new in town, you were not called to the town by a king, lord or even the city guard... You are for the most part a wandering thrill seeker, you are being kept in check by the guards and must prove yourself worthy to them. It may be frustrating in a Video game but it is the heart of the source material... If I were DM'ing the adventure I would have you go through simular things to a point... Now honestly I have not gotten beyond level 3 yet so some of the higher up stuff may get repetitive and annoying but I will have to see.
I am wondering why you went back through the same dungeon five times? I have done some of the same adventures more than once based on people asking for help but five times? That seems odd to me, were you going back to gather more loot?
I have not had the same problems you have had, however I was VERY frustrated with the game at first until I realised that Turbine was taking a different and in my opinion better approch to the MMO... Again I may not feel this way in several months but it is how I see it right now.
I think i have not been explaining enough in my first post why i do not like this game.
Yes Turbine did very well capture the D&D feeling but where is the fun playing it?
An MMO needs to be entertaining and keep please solo and group orientated players alike.
D&D online is not entertaining for several reasons the first one being only able to get experience by quests and thus gy grouping.
I do not mind grouping but i do not want to be forced into grouping ONLY even when this approach is due to the D&D background.
Then we have the inn solution for resting, again faithfull to the D&D background but is it fun?
Well it aint at least not for me.
Blatant lack of customization of the interface is another issue, every modern MMO offers at least some of it.
This game is a way to rigid implementation of the D&D ruleset and i wonder how a quest only based MMO can capture the interest of his players over a longer period of time.
DDO = playing doom but rolling a 20 sided die before you can shoot your gun everytime you click the left mouse button. Victor Watcher is so lieing through his teeth in this interview, when he says the combat captures the spirit of DDO, not even close. I don't think I have to post to tell you they are dreading their release and trying to hype this up as much as possible. Heck it may have been the plan from day 1, it seems as if their whole buissness plan was to spend 75% on advertising and 25% on development as I could swear their game engine is a rehash of Asheron's Call 2 and the warforged are also remnicsent of character models borrowed from Asheron's Call 2. I see DDO adverts on every webpage even the slightest bit related to some form of geekdom. They are just going to repeat this with LOTR, using the name to get by with a subpar product. This is all par for the course in the console world where many movie tie in games get made, but they usally end up costing you $15 for the game after a week in the bargain bin, not $15 a month like here, for what?
I feel bad for those that ordered online and can't cancel, if you pre-ordered in a brick and mortar store; unless they charged you full price I wouldn't pick it up, sure you loose 5 bucks but consider yourself fortunate.
Lastly, don't forget how Turbine closed down the Asheron's Call 2 online game only weeks after they sold a new expansion. What more can you expect from a company with buisness ethics like that?
Truer words have never been spoken, Fion I like the cut of your jib.