Dungeons & Dragons Online

Category: Opinion

DDO Hiatus for me?

By on May 4th, 2016

ScreenShot00359So, anyone who’s read this website at all knows that in the past year I’ve not been posting much. I’ve tried to post at least once a month so as not to be taken off DDO’s official fansite page and up until last month I have been posting enough. I was looking at the fan page list to see what other people are writing and noticed that this site was unlisted for some reason. I reached to Cordovan on twitter and got no response back. The terms & agreements explicitly say that Turbine has the right to remove a site from the list with no explanation to the fansite administrators. I’m trying to figure out what I did to become unlisted. Maybe I didn’t post within a 30 day time frame. Accept for last month, which was after I found out I was removed, I know that I posted at least once within each month but maybe it was after 30 days. Maybe I posted something that the Turbine fanpage administrator deemed as defamatory. I have before been critical of things in DDO but I would hardly consider them defamatory. In March I posted about how I was going to start streaming on Twitch and that post was featured on the official DDO Chronicle. I don’t get it. Do they want to help promote me or not?

Aside from being taken down from the fansite list I want to write about why I haven’t been posting much. The real reason is; I haven’t been playing much. I’ve been working a lot lately and when I do get a chance to log on to DDO there aren’t many LFMs up(or LFGs? Which one is it?) The ones that are up either already in the quest too long for me to get anything out of it or I join and it doesn’t fill. If I put a “Looking for More/Group” it doesn’t fill either. Sometimes I get a person to join and they immediately jump in the quest and start it. That really annoys me to no end! At least ask. The reason I put up a group is because I want a GROUP! (I guess 2 people could be considered a group but still…) So after a half hour or so I’ll log off and play a different game. Lately my patience for waiting has gotten smaller and smaller. I’ll log on, see that nothing is going on and log off and start playing a different game. It could be just bad timing but I’m not so sure about that. I have a level 144 guild that I’m the leader of but the members are starting to take breaks too. We’re down to 4 active people now, and I’m hardly considered active. I would just recruit more people but I’m pretty stingy when recruiting. I have to get to know someone before I invite them and it’s hard to get to know anyone if I’m not playing much. (I have some gripes about some the “top” player base on my server Argonnessen but I don’t think I wanna get into that. The DDO administrators already don’t like me for some reason I don’t need to burn other bridges too which I might have just done with this sentience)

My wife and I pay for VIP for 3 months at a time and it runs out the beginning of June. She still plays a bunch so I’m sure we’ll renew hers but I’m not so sure about mine. I started being a VIP a few months after DDO became Free to Play. I’ve bought 2 expansions at greater then base level and I’ve bought 2 airships by buying turbine points and astral shards. One of my characters looks strikingly (randomly generated) like the person who taught me how to play Dungeons and Dragons. He passed away right before DDO went Free to Play. He played Final Fantasy Online and I’m sure he would have loved DDO! I genuinely love this game still and have invested too much money and time (and nostalgia)to completely give it up. I’ll keep logging on to see if anything is going on until my VIP runs out. Maybe by then I will re-find the joy in playing and it will give me a reason to renew VIP again.

Producer’s Letter (Gnomes)

By on Jan 15th, 2016

Producer Severlin released his producers letter and it he talks about the successes of 2015 and what is to come in 2016. One of the successes he mentions is the new random loot generation system. I myself am not a big fan of the new system yet. It almost seems too random to me if that makes any sense and some of the effects seem way to powerful for the minimum level of the item. It also can produce some items with too many effects(one or more of which is useless). One of my favorites that kind of fits into both of those problems are the “Murderous Gloves of Heal.” What kind of maniac craftsman in the Dungeons and Dragons world makes that item and lets it go into the world? If it was a mistake he would obviously destroy it to reclaim some of the materials. The new system also puts some of the old epic gear effects to shame(although the old epic gear has more on it then the new loot and it can create redundancies that are hard to slot for). I’m hoping with more time newer, more useful stuff will be on the auction house to help with slotting.

One thing I am really looking forward to is the new crafting system scheduled for Update 30. I think that the new effects will be very useful if created by the player. My hope is they just expand upon and improve the old crafting levels and not just add “Epic Cannith Crafting” or some junk like that. I don’t want to have to start completely over with my crafting levels.

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Gnome concept image by Turbine

Another thing that is coming down the pipeline for update 30 is the Gnome race as well as a Gnome Iconic. I’m really hoping to see a Dwarf Iconic with this update but I guess I’ll have to wait for that, if it is even planned at all.

When update 30 is released on Lamannia in the coming weeks please log on and do some testing. The more people test the less bugs we will have on official release to the live servers. The last thing we want are the live servers to unexpectedly go down for maintenance because so many bugs go thru in the update!

Update 29?

By on Dec 17th, 2015

codex warUpdate 29 was released today (December 17, 2015). It was live for a few hours then the game servers were taken down. I didn’t get a chance to log on while it was up but from what I understand from reading the forums, among other things, the new random loot generation was messed up pretty bad.

There is no official time given for when the severs will be brought back up but Cordovan says they’re aiming for December 18th early morning Eastern time zone. Judging from previous times that might change.

If you’re looking for something DDO related and you haven’t looked yet you can read the release notes here.

I was surprised when I read that they were going release it this early. From previous development cycles I thought that update 29 would be released after Christmas. I could be wrong, because I’m not a game developer, but it feels like Turbine was rushed to release this for some reason. I know the devs are working hard to get this fixed so I’d like to thank them and I’m sure they’ll get us back to banishing demons and devils in no time.

Night Revels!

By on Oct 30th, 2015

ScreenShot00154MABAR IS BACK!! Well, kinda. Fighting things in Delera’s Graveyard to get materials is back. The rest of the event is just a tad bit different. Instead of a raid there are now 4 quick challenge type quests for four different materials to collect. Bring different combinations of these materials to the trader in House Jorasco for items. Some of the old Mabar items are back as well as a bunch of new things as well.

To enter the quests you need to collect keys from killing things in Delera’s, or buying them from the DDO Store. You can also collect Pieces of Darkest Chocolate, which are a base ingredient for most trades. Both the keys and chocolates are unbound (accept the DDO Store ones) and can be traded or auctioned. All the items collected, excluding items purchased on the DDO Store, will expire at the end of 2015. Turbine Community Manager Cordovan was quoted in the forms saying this about item expiration.

“There are several reasons why we are trying out this method for event ingredients;one is to encourage people interested in getting items from the event to return to the graveyard in future years rather than stockpile ingredients in large enough amounts that future returns of the event amount to a trip to the Trader.

Another is to address the unfortunate issue of event ingredient duplication, should that be inadvertently possible in the future. This is one of the reasons why we were unable to re-use the Mabar ingredients in any fashion.

A third is to encourage people to buy items and consumables when they get enough ingredients to do so. We did want to make sure people with limited time could still participate and get something from the event, which is why the ingredient cost for the consumables and limited-duration items is quite low.”

All of the new items look pretty cool. Most of the effects the items have are nifty but maybe not worth slotting. I’ll probably end up getting one of each item I think looks cool enough and use a Mirror of Glamering to create a cosmetic.

Mabar proper may be officially gone but it’s left it’s ghost behind. I was in a raid group farming keys and many of the party members lagged out and disconnected including me. It took me multiple tries to reconnect. Night Revels Keys that I purchased, using a code, on the DDO Store a few minutes before I disconnected disappeared from my inventory. My worry was that I wouldn’t be able to use the code again but it looks like the servers never registered that I purchased it and I could enter the code again to redeem the items. The ironic part is then when Mabar was around I never experienced this crippling lag and disconnections.

For the most part I think the new event is fun. The first time bonuses for the quests are insanely high for it’s difficulty and time it takes to complete. I think everyone should give it a try.

Update 27

By on Jul 27th, 2015

4e03a34a-f186-468a-9a0c-8a7f2614c663Update 27 drops today, July 27, 2015. You can find the release notes here.

The experience changes that I mentioned in my last post are part of the new update as well a whole bunch of new things.

Of special note is that there are new items with the Monster Hunter (previously known as the Champion Hunter). He is now offering +1 and +2 tomes for various offence and defensive stats that, like all tomes, persist on reincarnation. It’s not much but every little bit counts.

I’m looking forward to going to Shavarath again. The new quests are level 13 for heroic and level 30 for Epic. I hope they raise the level cap to 30 soon. I have a feeling these new quests are going to be tough!

Upcoming Experience Changes

By on Jul 10th, 2015

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Even the flesh renders and hobgoblins are excited.

Some upcoming changes in the way experience is calculated were announced by developer Severlin. I am pretty excited by these changes. All of them have been a long time coming and they all seem reasonable.

He didn’t say when these changes will take place (for all I know they’re live right now but I haven’t logged on to check yet) but here is the gist of it.

  1. The Flawless bonus to experience now only counts your character’s deaths instead of the entire party. – I like this; We will see a lot less “Don’t Die” LFMs which might encourage newer players to join groups.
  2. Henchman deaths no longer reduce the flawless XP penalty – This is a nice plus because as it stands right now hirelings are more useless then they’ve ever been and that’s putting it nicely. (Funny side note about hirelings. When I first started playing I didn’t notice that there was a 10% bonus on XP for no one dying. I only noticed the 5% bonus for hirelings dying so I intentionally killed them before finishing the quest. I felt as stupid as a hireling when I figured out my error)
  3. There is now an NPC in the Hall of Heroes that will suppress your Bravery Streak and associated bonuses. – This will be useful if you want to do a raid but are not quite ready for elite at level.
  4. They’re looking into doing “Bonus Days” that will allow you to get more XP for having more people in your group. – It’s a nice boost that will make Vault of the Night even more lucrative.

 

Update 25 (Patch 1 and 2)

By on Apr 28th, 2015

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So, work has been kicking my butt and I haven’t been able to play much DDO let alone run Temple of Elemental Evil. I’ve heard some pretty good things about it but I’ve also heard that it can take a long time to complete and time is something I’ve been short on lately.

In the small amount of time I have had I have played with the new crossbow “feel” and I think it’s a vast improvement over the old way. Although I sometimes end up shooting and extra volley of arrows. I figure that with some practice I’ll figure out when to let my finger off the trigger in time time to avoid that. I suspect that it’s just my old habit of holding the trigger to load the next arrow in the chamber so to speak.

In any case here are links for the Update and Patch notes.

Some bad news with Patch 2 though. With it’s release some ladders have not been cooperating. Cordovan say’s the issue is being looked into.

Also, Cordovan talked about some things to come in Update 26 (aiming for June). It looks like some new heroic and epic quests are coming. Amrath. Also, they are aiming to release warlock then too. As with anything though, I would not count that as a promise. Sometimes things get mucked up and things might get pushed back.

Temple of Elemental Evil Preview!

By on Mar 25th, 2015

Severlin, Steelstar, Knockback, and Cordovan did a brief preview two quests in the Temple of Elemental Evil then answered a few questions. I’m really looking forward to this module. A few months ago when the DDO servers went down for maintenance on my day off, I pulled out the old Atari/Troika PC game and installed it with the Circle of Eight mod pack. If you get a chance it is well worth heading over to GOG and spending the $6 on it . It’s a turned based game and I can’t wait to see how Turbine translates this storyline into DDO’s system.

They also briefly talked about the reworking rogues will be getting along with changes to crossbow to make all of the types more viable in the game as well as changing the animations so it’s smoother. They will be previewing this next week on the livesteam.

At the end of the video they were debating on talking about something that they are not allowed to talk about. They did not end up talking about said subject but it was implied later that they will be releasing more classic tabletop D&D content.

The Lost Art of the Healbot

By on Feb 12th, 2015

ScreenShot00784Story Time: A while back I joined a group doing Epic Elite High Road. Most of the characters were not self sufficient. I know I wasn’t. I had rolled up an experimental 2 rogue/18 fighter. I was on my first life and I was still in the melee destiny circle so my self healing options were limited. I think all of the other members of the group were in the same boat.

Needless to say, we didn’t do very well. It ended up being a wipe. I wasn’t too focused on this particular character so I swapped to my healer. He’s a total nanny-bot. Pure radiant servant. He’s an elf so there’s not even any need to waste action points in his elf tree because not much in there is useful for a healer. All the other characters in the group were the same. When we restarted we completed the whole chain easily.

I think too much emphasis is put on being self-sufficient. Epic Destinies are making it very easy to be self-sufficient. People aren’t rolling up healers as much as a result. Groups aren’t waiting for healers to join anymore. Characters that are new to Epic Destinies can’t survive. I find that groups that have a healer tend to go well. The melee can focus on killing things because they don’t have to stop to heal themselves. Epic level raids do tend to need at least one healer so I don’t think we will be seeing healers go away totally.

This somewhat extends to heroic content as well. Most groups don’t wait for a healer anymore. Actually most groups don’t wait to even fill. There are so many times when I join a group the quest is almost done when I enter and I have a penalty to xp. This seems like something that would frustrate new players and lead to a lot of people quitting before they even get to know how awesome DDO can be.

I mostly play on one server, Argonnessen, so I don’t know if things are different on other servers. Let me know if your server is different of if this is happening all over DDO.

 

U24 Hotfix 2

By on Jan 30th, 2015

ScreenShot00729A small hotfix was released. There were only a few changes.

  • Fireball and Fireball spell-like abilities no longer use the strength score of the caster to determine DC. I know a few fire sorcerers who will be happy.
  • Tactical feats no longer add character level to DC. I was wondering why my cleric was able to trip everything. It came in handy. I understand why it was fixed but I’m sad to see it go.

There were just a few more things fixed and you can read about them here.