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If clerics in DDO are like clerics in 3rd or 3.5 edition I am SOOOOO going to make a cleric. I really enjoyed the last 3rd edition cleric I made. Very tough decent melee and some fun spells to play with and I didn't have to worry so much about filling all my spell slots with heals.

kaid

Signing for betas is so retro'.

I'm very interested in seeing the combat/magic system. If the magic system is anything remotely close to DnD there's going to be a lot of pissed off kids who want instant gratification.

"WTF Y DONT I HAV MP? WHRE MY SPELS GO?"

Hopefully, these points were argued in those same design meetings, and there were reasons you came up with why you couldn't do things that way. I fear your solution has essentially made high-level wizards completely unbalanced, since they'll be able to cast way more spells than the rulebooks every envisioned.

Wow.  All I can say is -- disappointing decision.  Don't get me wrong; it might work for the game.  But it won't be D&D.

The problem of limited spellcasting at early levels should be addressed by the dungeon design, not by changing the character system.  To wit.

Wow.  All I can say is -- disappointing decision.  Don't get me wrong; it might work for the game.  But it won't be D&D.

Tangential question: has anyone done a MMORPG with turn-based combat?  (Other than Puzzle Pirates.)

That's why you aren't a game designer.

What works for PnP won't work on the computer, especially not in a MMORPG. (It may work in a slow paced tactical game like the old AD&D PC games)

In a PnP session you can say "we rest for 5 hours." In a MMORPG you actually have to do the resting, and you aren't eating pizza and clowning around during that time. A system where Wizards had to re-memorize spells every 4 or 5 fights would be utterly retarded.

The time in D&D has always been completely off with regards to turn lengths, battle lengths, etc. That would show up in a MMORPG. In one of the old D&D PC games an encounter might take 20 minutes to work out, in a MMORPG it will take 1-2 minutes. Nobody wants to rememorize spells every 10 minutes.

In a PnP game, 5 encounters might take of the entire playing time. In a MMORPG that's 15 minutes.

To be fair, the D&D spellcasting system was used pretty much as-is in NWN, and it worked pretty well there.

Cannot be directly compared: In NWN you can rest at any time for eight speeded-up "hours" to restore spells and regain HP. While you do this, nothing at all happens elsewhere in the game: You're the centerpoint, the rest is triggered events.

Our senior game designer actually wrote a dev. diary about the spell system back in early March.

http://www.ddo.com/index.php?page_id=84

I don't think it was a bad decision. It was merely a realization and a admission that CRPG != PNP RPG. They are just paced differently, handle differently, and have to work off of different rules. The problem with most spellcasters in MMOG's is that people play a spellcaster because they usually have much more interesting things to do in combat than melee characters, and are more powerful. Taking away the ability of a spellcaster to cast something every fight in an MMOG would make them totally worthless. I can see the change as being that the instanced dungeons of DDO are going to be much more time-compressed than a PNP adventure would be. You probably won't have the random encounter issues of the travel to the dungeon, so you can do away with that time. Since the focus will be on the dungeon part of it, you can say "This takes a lot of days, so you get a lot of spells" and it makes sense.

Anyone know how they are handling AI/aggro control in this game?  How does a mob decide who to attack, and how can players change that? 

Also, 1st edition in the hizzy.  WTF is with this unlimited multiclassing, fancy feats and crap?  Back in my day, my warrior had a +1 shortsword, some banded mail and a THACO number.  And I was damn thankful...

Also, 1st edition in the hizzy.  WTF is with this unlimited multiclassing, fancy feats and crap?  Back in my day, my warrior had a +1 shortsword, some banded mail and a THACO number.  And I was damn thankful...

Cannot be directly compared: In NWN you can rest at any time for eight speeded-up "hours" to restore spells and regain HP. While you do this, nothing at all happens elsewhere in the game: You're the centerpoint, the rest is triggered events.

This "rest when convenient" mechanism would not work in a MMORPG where there are a lot of players who are active during those eight hours.

4 or 5 fights in a PnP session is a WHOLE session.  So it should be no surprise that the game over time settled into the point where your average caster had enough magic for 4 or 5 fights.  4 or 5 fights doesn't even get you started in most MMOG's so it's pretty obvious something had to give.

Bruce your an idiot if you think your avg player is going to put up with his wizard or mage running out of spells with any regularity.

We all know how much everyone in EQ loved playing Wizards with the whole nuke 3 mobs go afk for 20min fucking medition in early levels when you weren't gaurenteed to have crack at all times.

As long as your not really doing anything different (EQ clone) you have to compete with WoW, if you want to stand a chance the game better look great, have good atmosphere and move quickly.  Fast paced combat will make bad combat systems seem more skill-based and interesting for your avg gamer who doesn't look too deep beneath the surface and see he's still only using 4 skills just he has to hit the buttons faster.

That's most MMOG's.  That's what should give -- most MMOG's.  Because if you're just going to make a game like most MMOG's, your chance of success is lessened.

Again, I'm not saying that fast-paced combat isn't the way to go.  Just that you can do that with faster rest times, without compromising the integrity of the PnP system.

Bruce

I addressed those points obliquely in my second paragraph.  You want 1.5 million subscribers?  You gotta have a game flexible enough for both the casual and catass.

Anyway, they addressed that (rest times) in that diary, and what happened was it turned out that stopping to rest for even a few moments every couple of fights was too tedious, while upping the number of spells significantly was too cumbersome.

If the solution was a simple and obvious as lowering the rest time I really hope they would have explored that earlier in the process.

Figured ya'll might be interested in this. We opened up registrations for the DDO Alpha today.

http://www.ddo.com/index.php?page_id=66&pagebuilder[module]=article&pagebuilder[display_item]=43

Wrong.  There's nothing wrong with saying your 8 hours only takes 60 seconds.  This is a game, not a virtual reality simulation.

If you prefer, you can just say the rest times are changed in the rules from 8 hours to 60 seconds.  Far better rule change than reworking the whole spellcasting system so you can cast 10 times more spells and then rest 8 hours.

There is nothing wrong with it in a single-player game: Nothing else happens during those eight virtual hours when you rest, so they are speeded up.

In a multiplayer game, someone somewhere are doing something else than resting. The game needs to cater for them. The game is no longer centered around your (party's) actions. You cannot accelerate those eight hours for everyone, unless you make time irrelevant. And you can not because effects have durations and whatnot.

Hey, look, I was right and you were wrong! How did that happen?

The only way the "8 hours in sixty seconds" of NWN can be implemented in a MMORPG is in a hub+instance model like Guild Wars, because then the "game" is centered around your party again.

Yes, you can throw out the one thing that balances D&D wizards. 60 second rest period? Yes please. Very fine for making a traditional MMO, very bad for trying to implement D&D.

In a multiplayer game, someone somewhere are doing something else than resting. The game needs to cater for them. The game is no longer centered around your (party's) actions. You cannot accelerate those eight hours for everyone, unless you make time irrelevant. And you can not because effects have durations and whatnot.

Hey, look, I was right and you were wrong! How did that happen?

Yes, you can throw out the one thing that balances D&D wizards. 60 second rest period? Yes please. Very fine for making a traditional MMO, very bad for trying to implement D&D.

I like how everyone is just ignoring the points made in the blog (or whatever it was). It's like hens clucking.

Let's go over some of the points you guys are ignoring:

1: Even if it only takes 5 seconds to rest, you have to re-memorize spells, and changing what spells you are going to memorize is going to take much longer than five seconds.

2: Once you get a lot of spells remembering how many of each you have left is going to be a pain in the ass in real-time combat.

And I would add:

3: If resting only takes 5 seconds then it's totally different than D&D anyway and you've missed your original goal of being true to D&D, which is the whole reason this argument is occuring. Making the rest time insignificant makes it not D&D.

BG combat was real time and I never had an issue with it. You have a little counter in the corner of your spell icon which counts down each time you cast. When it hits zero you're out of that spell.

What, you never pressed the spacebar to pause/unpause the continous turn (not "real time") combat? Of course in a MMO pausing is right out the window.

What, you never pressed the spacebar to pause/unpause the continous turn (not "real time") combat? Of course in a MMO pausing is right out the window.

1: Even if it only takes 5 seconds to rest, you have to re-memorize spells, and changing what spells you are going to memorize is going to take much longer than five seconds.

Not really D&D, but does anyone really enjoy being a low level D&D wizard, who is essentially a one-charge magic item?

MMOG's are completely different.

You can't make a class that essentially stands up, does one thing every minute or so, then tries to avoid getting the monster's attention for the rest of the fight.

That's boring, and it's one of the reasons EQ's clerics were such an underplayed (yet vitally needed) class for so long. MMOG players want to be involved. People who like to play casters DON'T WANT TO MELEE.  That's why they chose casters in the first place

Time compression could work, since as I understand it, most(all?) of the D&D combat is instanced, a la Guild Wars style hubs. But I really think it plays more to the tastes of MMOG casters to use a spell point system.

"Oh, come on, people have different tastes and are a lot more complex than that.  They expect different games to provide different experiences.  2001: A Space Odyssey was a great sci-fi movie.  But if it had explosions and space battles and laser guns, it would play more to the tastes of sci-fi movie-goers, right?  Yeah, maybe, but then it wouldn't be the same movie.  If you want to make as broadly appealing MMOG to the existing MMOG player as possible, you shoudln't be using D&D.  But if you want to make a game with a particular angle that other games currently don't satisfy, with a strong hook that can appeal to some existing players AND appeal to some D&D players who maybe don't play MMOGs, then it makes sense to stick to the spirit of the game as much as possible."

Where does it say that they are trying to make anything but a broadly appealing MMOG?

So far in this thread, nobody has advocated a system that keeps the feel of D&D any more than the way the game is going to work.

As for your NWN problem with your friend mocking you for taking so long to finish the dungeon, hey, that's the price you pay for eventually being able to cast megaspells that far outstrip the abilities of meleers in later levels. 

Of course, people have different opinion on what constitutes the integrity of the game.

If Turbine wanted to piss away $10-20 million on a literal translation of D&D, they'd seriously be limiting their audience to only people who like D&D. Considering how much the license probably costs them, I'd imagine they'd want to make a more broadly appealing game than just to D&D geektards. Ergo, ditch the shit that won't translate well, such as the rest system.

If you name your product D&D online, I would think your primary target would be people who like D&D.

as long as they make it fun it probably doesnt matter.

Why would you shackle the game developers with a license that doesn't allow them to make the best kind of game they want to make?

In a MMORPG you have thousands of players spending thousands of hours banging away on every available spell, every available class, special item, etc, with no DM to police things. I'm sure using the D&D ruleset as is people would quickly discover game-breaking elements that really don't matter in the PnP version.

Heh, trust me every concievable weakness in the D&D ruleset has been exploited to an infinite degree by some watery-eyed munchkin in some basement somewhere while DM'ing his own solo campaign.  The exploiters in MMOG's are like grade-schoolers when it comes to the number crunching D&D geeks will do to get an advantage.

I'm not even going to chime in on your D&D is generic fantasy thing other than to say you've got your chickens and eggs confused.

The fact YOU don't see a difference doesn't mean there ISN'T a difference.

The fact YOU think there's a difference doesn't mean there IS a difference.

Move on.

So what is the major difference between D&D and any other fantasy thing, setting and flavor wise? Owlbears? It's a serious question. You can say the same about MEO to some degree, although MEO allows for some more plot and name-dropping.

So what is the major difference between D&D and any other fantasy thing, setting and flavor wise?

I never played D&D so I have little idea what anyone's talking about. 

Is there phat loot?

phat lewts - check
crafting - check
level treadmill - check

See, everything you need for the perfect MMoG.

Can I block his posts from appearing as I read?  Thanks!

Exactly.  The point of D&D is not the setting, it's the game design and mechanics.

I, OTOH, would avoid a FR world if at all possible, simply because of the existence of Drizz't and Elminster, two of the biggest munchkin wet dreams to ever foul the genre. Hate isn't nearly a strong enough word.

I sent Turbine a question regarding some videos on IGN (http://media.pc.ign.com/media/619/619908/vids_1.html).


The Response:

It's, at the very least, a step in the right direction. Having to be in range means running away is a reasonable form of escape and there's some player skill in simply getting close. It's a better translation of the AD&D rules than I expected.

The lack of Usenet newsreader-style killfiles is something I definitely miss in these newfangled Web boards.

Currently, the controls for two-weapon fighting are the same as they are for one-weapon fighting -- you click the mouse to attack.

The mechanics are where it gets interesting.

First, a little bit of background for our melee system in general: when you attack something in melee, you start a progression, or chain, of attacks. The number of attacks in your sequence depends on your base attack bonus (BAB), which is determined by your class and level.

This system is our way of handling the multiple attacks you get in PnP D&D as your BAB increases. So, for instance, a character with a +1 BAB might have a two-swing attack progression, while a character with a +10 BAB might have a four-swing attack progression.

Now, when you're wielding two weapons, your attack animations are obviously different, but the attack progression system is still the same. The difference, of course, is that you're wielding two weapons, so on some of your attacks, you'll get an off-hand attack on the monster. As you get better at two-weapon fighting (with feats like Improved Two-Weapon Fighting), you'll get the off-hand attack more often.

All of the other PnP rules for two-weapon fighting -- the to-hit penalties, the reduction in penalties if your off hand weapon is a light weapon, having only 1/2 of your Str bonus to damage in your off hand, etc. -- should apply in DDO.

Of course, keep in mind that this is our current system, and is subject to change based on alpha and beta results. But this is what we're doing right now.
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Yet more answers (and unfortunately, the answer people are starting to get cranky!):

    * If you're wielding two weapons, you'll be attacking with both of them if you're attacking, or blocking with both of them if you're blocking. No options for anything too fancy like attacking with one weapon while blocking with the other.

    * Yes, you do need to block in order to get your shield bonus right now. To compensate for this, shields in DDO give much more of a defensive bonus than they do in PnP D&D. If you're not using a shield, you can still block, but you don't get as much of a bonus for doing so. Note that it is definitely still possible to be hit while blocking though.

    * Blocking's pretty much instantaneous --you hold down Shift, and you go into a blocking pose. You let go of Shift, and you switch back to a regular pose. As you get used to the system and to monsters' attack patterns, it becomes fairly easy to anticipate an attack and hit the block key before it lands. The trick is to not be in the middle of an attack when the monster attacks you, because you can't cancel out of an attack in order to block.

    * The individual attacks in a chain are faster than separate, single attacks, but you can't move or change targets in the middle of a chain. However, if you stop clicking during your attack chain, you'll stop attacking after you finish your current animation. (I'm not sure if you automatically stop attacking if your target dies, but this would make sense too.)

Hmmm. I wonder with Firefox/Greasemonkey if I could create a runtime script to change certain authors posts to Bla bla bla. Bla? blaBLAbla blabla!

hmmm...