Dungeons & Dragons Online Forum News (Mar. 30, 05)

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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.

Xundau, Community Relations

Do you need a Cleric? Nah........

I agree. I honestly believe that clerics in 3.5e are so powerful in order to encourage people to play them more. And people *still* don't like playing them, at least in my experience.

Crap. That sounds like me. Those spiked chain builds always look so cool on paper though ...

Do you need a Cleric? Nah........

Actually, I just realized I misread Destroid's original quote -- I'd never get a character killed on purpose.

I guess I'm more of the "guy whose character gets killed early because his weird exotic weapon build was interesting but tragically flawed."

New Screenies (for real)

Heh. I noticed the interview was up and thought I'd stop by and let you guys know about it before going to bed, but I see that I'm actually late to the party

I'm pretty sure the purplish guy in the golem shot is a stone golem, while the figure on the right is an iron golem. That shot is actually a really good example of what we can do with our gearsets (additional geometry that we can add on top of existing models). The two golems are actually the same model -- if you look at their legs, you'll notice that they're both standing in a very similar stance. However, they have very different gearsets, so they come off as more-or-less completely different models.

This saves our artists a ton of time, because they can create monsters that look very different from one another without necessarily having to create a whole new model.

New Screenies (for real)

Good question. The Turbine Engine currently has a few extra features built in that helps us take good screenshots.

The first one is an option to detach the camera from behind the character and fly around Descent-style. This is how we can get such a dramatic angle for the giant shot.

The other is an ability to take a screenshot at a much higher resolution than you're playing -- if you specify a multiplier, your client will pause while it renders the scene at an incredibly high resolution.

I'm not sure if either of these features will be in for release. The free camera mode would be kind of exploitable if you could do it at any time, but it would be cool to see it as a spell or special ability. The screenshot blowout is cool, but the server doesn't pause along with your client, which can be a problem when you don't have access to /immortal.

Of course, the other thing that really helps us with screenshots is the fact that we have professional artists taking them

Where are the dice???

This is actually something that came up early on in the forums, and is a good example of a feature that the dev team had considered, and went ahead and implemented due in part to community feedback.

The current iteration of our UI has a space for a d20 that shows your character's dice rolls, with some limitations. For instance, we can't show every roll in combat, but we try and get the most important ones -- to-hit rolls, saves, etc. Obviously, there are some things, like Spot or Listen, that we don't want you to see, so you won't be seeing those rolls (and in our system, they are being made constantly anyway, so seeing all of those rolls might be a little overwhelming).

Also, because of space limitations, we're currently only doing d20 rolls -- the d20 fits nicely in a corner of the screen, but 5d6 (or 10d6) for a fireball might be a little too distracting.

As Victor said in another thread, the UI is probably the most fluid element of our game design right now, but the d20 has been in for a few weeks and everyone seems to like it, so with any luck it'll be a feature that stays.

dodge, etc

Basically, there are two components to each attack in DDO's combat system:

• Making the attack connect -- if an attack doesn't physically connect, nothing's going to happen. So if a hill giant's about to attack you, and you back off or tumble away in time, the giant won't even get a to-hit roll against you. We will rarely if ever be moving your avatar for you, but some skills, like Tumble, will help you get out of the way faster. Also, some attacks are impossible to dodge, like magic missile.
• Resolving the attack -- when an attack connects, we go to the D&D rules and figure out whether any damage was actually done. This is more-or-less by the books -- if your attack connects with a monster, you'll get your d20 roll, add your attack bonus, and compare it to the monster's AC. If your number comes out on top, you'll do some damage. If not, you won't.
  Note that getting the attack to connect, or getting out of the way of an incoming attack, is basically the "player skill," while resolving the attack is where the "character skill" component comes into play.

Also note that we can adjust the player skill/character skill balance by making it easier or harder to connect attacks. In fact, we did just that recently by slowing our monsters down somewhat; character skill has a little more weight in our combat system right now. We'll continue to make adjustments and tweaks throughout alpha and beta, but this base system should remain.

Sporkfire, Community Relations Manager

Maybe this will generate some BUZZ!!

Not yet. But there was a brief preview phase some time ago (well before my time), where we were able to gather feedback.

The UI

While I am not well-versed in the history of DDO's UI, other experience shows that of all the things that are likely to change in any game's development cycle, the UI is probably the most fluid. That being the case, we probably won't talk about or show it too much until there are people actually playing and giving us feedback on it.

This is why most game developers try to avoid showing the UI in screenshots - once you show it, you better be prepared to live with it for a long time.

Bring me a stick

To boil down all of the responses and put the "official response stamp" on it, the Beta Rewards program does exist as a means to say thank you to the customers who have supported Turbine over the years. It is appropriate, since they helped us grow and eventually gain the opportunity to work on new games like DDO. It's not unprecedented, and many industries have these sorts of loyalty incentive programs.

But it will not be the only means by which we select participants. We'll be looking to active DDO community members as well, and even pulling people at random based on the information they submit in their registration. So, this is no time to worry about whether or not you'll be able to get in and play.

where can i find the link to sign up for beta please

No sign-up yet. When we do open them up, we'll make sure that it is pretty glaringly apparent how to do so. We don't want you to miss out

Will there be DM's?

MMOG's don't really support the live GM very well, if at all. It is something that is fairly unique and special about the tabletop experience. The closest that online gaming gets to such a thing is through the Mod community on games like Neverwinter Nights. Some groups, including some on these forums, do get together for some traditional PnP over IRC and whatnot, but that's really another type of gaming.

The client will have features that emulate some of the interactions that you might expect from a DM, and so it is designed into the immersive elements of a game. Most MMORPG's have the single task of immersing you into a virtual world. We have the double duty of immersing you into the D&D experience within a virtual world.

Will there be DM's?

Yea, I'm talking about a DM, as in the guy who sits at the head of the table, behind the screen with his module and plays all the NPC's, describes the environment and controls all of the monsters and whatnot. We'll be emulating parts of that experience through the game client.

As for other interpretations:

We will certainly have Customer Service Reps, who are often known as GM's in other games, but they won't have any influence on the game encounters and narrative in that role.

We could run events with a live event staff (don't know if or how often we would run these yet - just making an example), but that's still a substantially different dynamic from a PnP DM.

But from what the original poster asked, it seems like the closest equivalent in the online space would be a Mod author.

Calandryll, Director of Community Relations

New Screenies (for real)

We often give exclusive screenshots to websites to post along with previews, interviews, etc. That doesn't mean we wont post new screens on DDO from time to time as well.