Nov
20

What happend with DDO?

This is only be my opinion on what happened with our Monday night group with DDO. It?s not drama filled or anything like that?it was just a decision we made. Keep in mind that there were four other guys (Brent, Michael, Craig and Adam) in the groups…so experience may vary.

The Good:

I’ll start with this, but I’m sure some will skip over it and go right for the bad because hey, nobody leaves a game because everything is going great

The strongest part of DDO, in my opinion, is the group experience around the dungeon crawls. DDO, has a very solid dungeon crawling game with something to do for every class. Now…that’s an important point there. Every class seems to play a role within the dungeons of DDO. I still believe that there are really no useless classes in DDO, but opinions may vary from players more versed in DDO than I.

That’s all I got. I know…it’s sad that I?ve only got the ?dungeon crawl? as a good point, but it’s still a feature that some current MMOs still haven’t mastered. This whole approach to the dungeon/group experience was “the glue” of our Monday night adventures in DDO.

The Questionable:

1. Click-Click-Click-Click-Click. If we weren’t talking about something over Skype, the background noise was always a mouse being clicked. The “active combat” may be the biggest hit against DDO, because after a while, it just becomes a very frustrating twitch game. We played for about 1-2 months and I still have no idea how to hit mobs in that game…so I find myself just clicking. Alot. And?.how do I use skills in that game again?

As much as we all complain about the current “main stream” combat systems in MMOs, I think the consensus in the group was that DDO would benefit from going old school in this area.

2. Progress. I think we stayed at level 4 for about 6 years. I know…I know. It’s a different leveling system and we only play once a week, and DDO does have ranks within levels. Still, it didn’t seem like we were progressing at all. Big problem for a group of explorers and achievers (?finger in the wind estimation of our Bartle types, heh?)

Examples: In preparation for our switch to LOTRO, I leveled both a Campion and a Warden up to level 6 (…Wardens are cool btw…). I think I got a couple titles for both as well. Progress. In EQ2, in one play sitting I usually end up getting at least one achievement point and finish about 4-5 quests. I level in that game about every 2nd or 3rd play session. Progress. In Eve….ummmm….I think I progress . In WoW…I can get 4-5 quests done. For our DDO sessions, we were lucky to get one quest done in a 2-3 hour play session.

Those were the top two issues that came to my mind. I know there are probably other good/bad points that the group as a whole can come up with. I sure there are ones you guys can come up with as well…and please do, if for no better reason than for those players who are interested in hearing more about DDO.

Is DDO a bad game because we left? No…it isn’t. I think this is just a case of some of the more glaring flaws of the game just being amplified by our specific group dynamic. Yes, it is said that DDO is great for a static group of players…just not for this specific static group of players

D out.

Posted in DDO
12 Comments Posted by Darren

Blue Kae says:

November 20, 2008 at 11:08 am

I would add two things.

The good: nostalgia. Turbine got me a lot closer to the feelings I used to have playing AD&D on Friday nights with my three buddies in high school.

The questionable: too heavily instanced. I’m primarily a solo player. I generally don’t join guilds/kinships/corps/etc. with CoH being the only major exception. As a result, 90% of my grouping experience is with PUGs. Most of that comes from chance encounters near a quest objective with people pursuing the same goal. Like with Guild Wars and Age of Conan, heavy use of instances eliminates the majority of the social experience for me (plus it makes the world seem way too small).

Thallian says:

November 20, 2008 at 1:04 pm

Campion ? is that like a Cambion, or is it someone who makes camps for a living?

Scott says:

November 20, 2008 at 1:47 pm

Just an observation/question for Blue:

Turbine got me a lot closer to the feelings I used to have playing AD&D on Friday nights with my three buddies in high school. … I?m primarily a solo player. I generally don?t join guilds/kinships/corps/etc.

DDO is trying to emulate, more or less, that D&D feeling. D&D was *never* a solo game, neither is DDO despite a few levels worth of some Solo difficulty on the quests. I’ve never seen a tabletop RPG that was “for soloing” and DDO isn’t an MMO for soloers either.

Observation for Darren: just from reading all the game-hopping over the past several months, it seems like you’re caught in your own web. With the exception of EVE, you cry for something new but when given something new I don’t get the impression you put much effort into actually learning the “new” part, and just wish it was the “old” in a new game instead. My biggest gripe with DDO’s active combat, for example, it’s the melee players who don’t actually pay attention that the mob has been dead for 10 seconds while they clickclickclick away swinging their swords and the rest of us are shaking our heads at them. I barely understand DDO’s metagaming — I’m not a D&D player so I look at it all and say “huh?” — but according to the players who know what they’re doing it offers incredible character customization and I’ve seen some people do amazing things with builds they’ve come up with.

I miss having the open world to roam around in like a “real” MMO, but DDO in particular benefits from being in a good guild, a static group, or both. I just recently found a good guild but with Moria launched I’m spending all my time there…

Darren says:

November 20, 2008 at 2:57 pm

@ Scott Re: Darren game hoping: Not sure what you mean about me asking for something new, but I think I’m caught in the perfect storm of some pretty good expansions that need to be looked at. Over the last month we’ve had, what, four expansions: WoW, Eve, LOTRO and EQ2. As a gamer, I’m getting dizzy…but as someone who “looks” at these things, I’m finding it very interesting how each title is trying to deliver its experience to the player. Blog post incoming on this soon(TM).

DamianoV says:

November 20, 2008 at 3:04 pm

A few additional comments from the cheap seats (all IMO, of course):

1) I feel that DDO is, essentially, a “raid” game. Success rather hinges on planning, careful prep, cautious movement, and a good dose of foreknowledge about what you’re actually up against certainly doesn’t hurt (that “fireball brigade” ambush comes to mind… walking in with Fire Resist on everyone would’ve made for a different outcome, I suspect.)

Anyway, we didn’t really bother with much of the above, playing loose and relaxed, conversing on the side, cracking wise, and so on. In the handful of sessions I played, we would actually do 2-4 dungeons a night… but we might only successfully complete 1 or 2. There were a dozen reasons for that… I was constantly ending up with the wrong mix of spells for what we were doing, for example: as a low level mage, that made me even _more_ useless than normal… but whatever the reasons, that drastically slowed our progress.

(It probably didn’t help that we were constantly trying level 5-7 dungeons as a level 4 group. Poor Michael must have went thru a dozen Cure Light wands. Per night.)

2) Following from #1, lack of completion in DDO equals lack of progress. Slow advancement was arguably a result of not being willing to get to level 5 by re-doing the Waterworks and/or Harbor quests 2-3 times before wandering over to the Steam Tunnels. Boring? Yeah… but not as boring as staring at your lifestone…

On more of a group dynamic note:
3) I suspect we would have kicked ass with simply another healer (or another tank). We had 1 tank, 3 “squishies”, and 1 lone cleric. No cleric is _that_ good.

4) Tranquilizer darts could have been useful. Real ones. For use on each other. “Wait! There’s a… (FWOOM)… trap.” “Hold up, this looks like…(WHOA! OMG! ARGH!) …an ambush.” “So, where’s the mage? … He’s down in the boss chamber already.” (That was accidental. Honest!)

On a personal level:
5) I would like to register (yet another) complaint to the Powers That Be about the level 1 and 2 mage spell selections. Not DDO’s fault, really… they’ve been Wimpy-on-a-Stick since the Basic D+D Blue Book. “Look, Ma, 1d4+1 hit points! Pew! Pew!”, while the rogues and warriors crack bones for 10-20 half a dozen times.

At least in DDO I could potentially cast it 15-20 times or so before I was useless, as opposed to the original “One-Shot Wonder” design. If not for Charm Person… (which has it’s own problems in DDO.) And don’t even get me started on Grease, Mage Armor, Cause Fear, and so on. Otto’s Dance is good. Scorching Ray is ok (Melf’s is dodgeable, not so good.)

20/20 hindsight, I should’ve burned some cash on some decent wands. Oh well.

November 20, 2008 at 8:21 pm

@Damianov: yeah, I’ve been struggling to learn to play the wizard class myself. It gives a whole new meaning to “squishie.” The XP thing is weird for us MMO players, but I recall that’s how it was done back in tabletop days — we got our XP at the end of the adventure, not on the fly like videogame RPG’s do. Raid game… yeah kinda. I’ve always said it’s perfect for the so-called “middlecore” players, who have the desire and skill to do dungeon/raid runs but not the time. DDO lacks all the travel time and grinding for stuff to prep for the next run, so those who lack the time can login, get their group, and they’re in the dungeon. LOL at your #4 btw!

@Darren: it’s not just you, it’s nearly every blogger I read (and I’ll include myself in this list) who jumps at every “new shiny” hoping against hope for something “new” without really having a definition of what “new” we’re looking for. We jump in, oooh and aaah at the new eye candy then as soon as something legitimately “new” that we weren’t expecting throws us for a loop, we reject it and start wishing it was just like the “old” we were allegedly tired of. That aside, for those of you who are currently involved in several (or all) of the new expansions, whether you all stick with them or not I’m enjoying reading about all the adventures in games I’m not playing, and hopefully I’ll get to read some of your Moria adventures soon.

Nezrak says:

November 21, 2008 at 12:02 am

nice comments.
I totally agree with the repetitive content… that was the biggest problem with our group… we were really tired of the same contents night after night.

It’s sad tho, our static group really enjoyed many aspects of the game. I kept trying to get everyone excited about this game again, and when we did, we recleard all the dungeons *for the xillion time, we all went back to something else again (took us 2 days)

About the click click sounds, I didn’t felt the twichy type you were talking about at all… maybe it’s my Diablo background lol

MMOG Nation » From One Turbine To Another says:

November 21, 2008 at 10:37 am

[...] may have already read Darren?s short post on the Monday night group?s decision to jump from DDO to Lord of the Rings Online. From his post: [...]

practicing your swing says:

November 8, 2009 at 11:17 pm

As a Newbie, I am always searching online for golfing articles that can help me. Thank you

Mike says:

December 1, 2009 at 9:44 am

I’d just like to voice my disagreement on a few points you’ve made. As I guess you’ve hinted to towards the end of your post, the progression problem was more you guy’s problem than it was the games. You only played once a week, and it didn’t allow you to level quickly enough for your tastes…but the game is pretty well balanced for it’s progression for average game players. My wife and I only play it as a break from WoW, and we have been moving along at a slow and steady pace with multiple characters, so again…I think this was more of your tastes than it was the game. Just don’t want to give casual readers (like myself) the wrong impression about the game.

DDO isn’t for everyone. It’s like playing D&D online, its not like playing WoW, or EQ, or any other kill random spawns repeatedly game. It IS a dungeon crawl game, focused on group dynamics and on more than simply hack and slash. Problem solving, trap avoidance, puzzles, as well as some nasty fights to enjoy.

I’m a WoW player (former EQ, EQOA, EQ2, SWG, Vanguard, PoTBS player) who is really bored with it, so I spend lots of my off time on DDO. It works perfect for that option, especially since it’s now free-to-play and doesn’t require another commitment.

I agree that the content is repetitive after a time (especially with my tendency to roll as many alts that will fit on a server). However, I think the combat system was one of the most enjoyable and innovative ones I’ve played with. It can get a little hairy manipulating larger fights, but realistically it should get harder. And not mindlessly engaging in auto attack while rotating special abilities is a welcome change from the MMOs I’ve played.

All in all, I think DDO is a damn good game, and for a free to play/download game…you wont find better.

Cheers!