Dungeons & Dragons Online Forum News (Dec. 29, 04)

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Here are today's Dungeons & Dragons Online forum highlights, collected from Dungeons & Dragons Online forums. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Jason Booth, DDO Dev Team

Action-oriented combat limits market appeal

And would, in fact, subtract from it by essentially removing what makes the combat system fun in the first place.

As the original poster said, he was attracted by the fact that DDO is going for something more exciting; there are many others like him. If you try to please everyone, you just homoganize the game to the lowest common denominator; often pleasing no one. Subscription gaming is a hard core business model; most people *HATE* the idea of subscriptions to anything, regardless of the way the financials work out. That puts it out of reach of the "Mass Market" by it's very nature, regardless of the design.

Besides, do the math. If you want a slow, low-interactivity, character stats based combat experience in a midevil fantasy world, how many MMP's do you have to choose from? 50? 100? Many more than that, actually. Now, if you want the same thing but in a more user skill/action oriented environment with real-time physics? You only have one choice available to you. So what do you think is greater, 5% of the first market, or 100% of the second?

Action-oriented combat limits market appeal

Ok, lets follow this logic out: The basic complaint is that the combat is "too hard" because it requires me to pay attention and react to what's happening on the screen. So the proposed idea is to remove the need to pay attention or react by creating an AI and automating the parts of the combat you need to pay attention to.

Lets follow that a bit further. I'm not personally interested in working out complex character choices on a spreadsheet, so lets add an automatic way to level up so I always choose the optimal path. Hell, lets just remove the choices all together, because someone might choose a wrong choice. Why have differentation of character if I might end up weaker than someone else?

A bit further: I don't want to analyze the economy in the game, so lets add an auto buy/sell routine to make money off of trades. Hey, why even have an economy at all then?

a bit further: I don't actually want to have to sit there while I watch this system run, can't I just have it run as a macro to play the game for me without requiring me to be there?

This is not DDO. This game is called Progress Quest, and you might enjoy it, but I find it rather boring (though a great lesson for people who have not played it).

DDO, on the other hand, will not have any type of Auto-Combat; it will instead require meaningfull choices from the player, preferably in a variety of contexts and pacings (moment to moment combat, combat stratagy, group stratagy, character progression, etc). These choices are what make DDO an actual game instead of a passive experience like a book or a movie (no! not another D&D movie! Please help us all!).

Moment to moment reflexes will have some effect on your ability to play; but generally speaking, a well organized stratagy of group play and understanding of the situation is far more effective than pure muscle memory. This is true in even the twitchiest of games out there, because people working together generally have an (n^2, power law) effect on power over ones who are working independantly, regardless of the rule systems governing the game. Add in a complex rule system like D&D and you have a rich palette of strategic choices which will often matter more than moment to moment chocies.

Xundau, Community Relations

Lvl 20 opening a print option.

We've talked about something along these lines (printable character sheets) casually before, but nothing's ever been scoped out. To make it a little more formal, I just submitted a feature request for it, and referenced this thread.

I'm not sure if it's something we'll have time to do, but I definitely agree that it's a good idea.

Separate permadeath servers

I spoke with a couple of people today to get some clarification on permadeath, and here's the deal:

We're definitely intrigued by the idea of permadeath, and think it would be interesting to see it implemented in a mainstream massively-multiplayer game. That being said, a permadeath option/server in DDO is not going to happen for release -- it *might* happen at some point in the future.

Now, we could easily set aside a server or two, flag them as permadeath, tell you that you're playing a permadeath server at your own risk, and run with it. But that's not our style -- there are just too many potential issues involved (Destroid does a good job of pointing these out), and throwing up a permadeath server without examining and addressing these issues would guarantee that permadeath wouldn't live up to yours or our expectations.

If permadeath is ever implemented in DDO, we want to make sure it's a fun and memorable play experience geared towards hardcore players, and not an exercise in frustration. In order to do this, we'd need to examine and possibly adjust many key aspects of DDO, because our game simply isn't designed for permadeath right now. This isn't something we're going to be able to do before release; it's something we're considering for the future, but I can't make any guarantees at this point.

I hope this answers your questions about permadeath.

Nik Davidson, Administrator

Make your case for Beta

Actually, let's not.

You'll get a chance to fill out a detailed application when we do announce beta signups, let's not start a Beta Fight Club, entertaining as that might be.

PvP

This one has run its course and then some. Since things have gone pretty far off topic and gotten into personal attacks, I'm going to close this thread. I'll preserve the discussion here, but do remember, this has been an announcement, not a debate.

I'd like to thank those that have contributed their thoughts and ideas, it's definitely helped us plan for the future.

Lvl 20 opening a print option.

There is no magic e-mail address where text goes in and features come out.

Sorry.

[ December 30, 2004, 20:00: Message edited by: chevalier ]