f13.net

Hey kids.  I finally accepted my beta invite (recieved on Nov 3rd :) ) and I'm going to try and get in game tonight.  If anyone one is still playing and wants to team with a newb let me know (though I see no new posts have been made in 6 days...).

Been awhile for me- I got busy with holiday crap, then fell in love with Civ IV again (I may be the worst Civ IV player of all time, but I still love it). It is hard to pick up and play for short periods, since most things require grouping of some kind. Maybe we can get everyone to agree to a night to get together and get some parties assembled.

Now setting the over/under line at 3 weeks. Place your bets!

I've been logging in every other night or so.  Character names (we haven't had a character names thread in a while):

Deb  (ftr 4)
Pip  (rgr 3)
Stoney  (bbn 3)
Jenkin  (wiz 2)
Samwise  (brd 1)

All on the Orien server; I haven't felt motivated to roll up a new level 1 on Kundarak yet.

You know, I didn't realize until looking at that list that my three most played characters are warrior variants.  That's extremely atypical for me.  Must be a symptom of combat in this game not completely sucking balls.

Like some, the holiday season actually gave me less time for gaming than normal.  Thank goodness THAT's over...

I'm still playing, but finding it harder to get a group of 6+ folk to do anything other than elite runs.  I have rolled up a few lvl 1's but hadnt really played them much.  I think they changed the loot tables in the early quests abit as I have a lvl 1 warforged wizard who got a +1 staff, and robe of Web, and a Robe of Epeditious Retreat withing the first 4 newbie quests.  Course, he can't use robes so I promptly started and elf wizard but have yet to switch stuff to him.

I'll try to hop on tonight 10pm EST ish.

Xilren, lv 6 CL
Nerlix, lv 1 WZ
Portable Battery, lvl 1 WZ 

Been playing regularly. Tonight is my Tuesday night home-group, though.

I've ben working up a new cleric you can add to your list though:

Ennis

I normally don't play clerics but am loving them in DDO.

I'm attempting to play nightly. For at least an hour.

Anyway, if you see me I'll be on as Mockery (3) Cleric.

I play, although I haven't done much since Christmas.  I started a character on the new server but can't remember what I named her.  Oh well... I don't fancy re-doing all those quests so soon, anyway.

"Currently updating 1016/1,074,347,387"

That thing better be broken because the number on the left is updating about once per second and I don't have 34 years to wait for this thing to load.

edit:  I'm not kidding about the 34 years.  Thats what the math comes to.

Just walk away for an hour or so.  I think it fixes itself when you're not looking.

OK done updating.  Gonna make a char on the server named Orien.  Named Murgos if I can.

Cya

Rolled up a Ranger.  I can tell already it's a gimp.  Whats the point of a light fighter with mediocre scouting abilities in a game where you can pick up a rogue and a fighter for your party at any given moment?

Going to reroll something different tonight.

Also right mouse button = mouselook and left = fire doofuses.  I kept firing arrows every time I went to look around.

The whole point of rangers is to get that free dual-wield feat and some tracking/ sneaking.  Then at level 2 you multiclass right out of it because in a computer RPG they're far inferior to fighters/ rogues, as you mentioned.

Ranger is the ultimate ninja assasin class IMO.  As stealthy as a rogue but with the HP and BAB of a fighter.  And free feats to boot. 

Definitely the best solo class of all the ones I've tried, since the average quest is at least 50% stealthable and you should be durable enough to handle whatever combat remains (particularly if you're good with a bow and arrow and can use the environment to your advantage).  The main disadvantage compared to rogues is that you can't handle traps.

I played a little bit with the 10 beta pass from the pre-order, but didn't want to burn out on the beta.  Just played enough to get a feel for the game and the classes.

Didn't like it.  Won't be buying. Carry on.

I was playing until my second hard drive crashed and burned and with it the beta test games that were installed on it. I'll most likely reinstall later this week, but I'm not sure how I feel about it. On one hand, I was having fun with the combat gameplay, but on the other hand, I'm just not enough of a D&D geek to get into the numbers game of it.

You know, maybe that explains why I like DDO more than most.  I like circle-strafing monkey on meth gameplay, and I like playing with D&D character stats.  That's pretty rare among the MMOG crowd, but I think it might be required to appreciate this game.

I'll probably do a pretty decent writeup at some point. My basic thoughts are that in 6 months this could be a pretty good game. Right now, not so much.

I don't think I ever have seen such non-existant board activity with the dissolution of an NDA.

The game is not ready for February.

Last time I played there was still a bug where enemies that got right next to you would just stop attacking entirely. One of the newbie missions, the "Miller's Quest" or whatever it is called, is really really difficult for some reason. My experience with it went like this:

Do it once, die almost instantly to first enemy.
Do it again, die almost instantly to first enemy.
Do it a third time, first enemy stops attack and I kill it, then two or three other enemies I meet later ALSO just stop attacking and I kill them too.

As such the difficulty is completely borked. I finished numerous missions I should have died on thanks to that bug. That's just one example but it's a pretty glaring one - how do you balance mission difficulty when you have a bug that makes enemies just stop attacking entirely?

I would figure that fixing a bug like that would be a top priority, as in fix it 24 hours after you find out about it.

---

In the end I get the AC2 feeling from it. Critical bugs, problems with the chat server, uninspired graphics, a lifeless game world. Despite all that it was enjoyable in some ways. I think it could be good given 6 months of dev work

I find it really strange that the percieved combat difficulty varies so much from person to person. Ive read reviews saying that most classes can solo pretty easy up to at least lvl 2 - while others say they didnt get past the first mob in the first instance.....

So far the combat, as a rogue, doesn't feel nearly as tight and well put together as I would like. More to follow.

From my limited stress-test experience, your success or failure is very much about understanding 1) Rolling a good D&D Character and 2) Not relying on the usual MMO Autoattack-and-hit-special-keys mindset.   The second stress test I got my ass handed to me by the first kobold because I forgot #2, much to my own embarassment when I remembered "oh right, click to attack."

Considering most gamers just give cursory attention to tutorials, the folks who couldn't get anywhere probably failed because of #2 as well. (Or, they did something very silly, like made a sorcerer with high INT rather than Charisma, or ignored STR in favor of maxing DEX on a Ranger. Or just plain maxed-out one stat rather than rounding them with the understanding you get stat+ at certain level-ups)

That is the second or third time that I have read "All the way to level two" and it is really turning me sour on this game.  Is getting your first level an epic ordeal or something?  I know there are only ten levels but still.

It's also interesting how often the phrase "well that's how it is in the pen and paper game" has come up, I feel like that's going to be the hardcore D&D fan's standard defense when problems come up.  If the game winds up being crap the fact that it is an accurate translation of the paper game isn't going to redeem it for the mainstream.

I'll give it a try anyways of course.

I think the lvl 2 thing is more related to that the most ppl who so far have any opinion is the stresstesters, which mostly managed to get about lvl 2..
 I soloed to 3 with a bard without that much difficulty, but I was somewhat picky with which quest I did, and not at all picky about jumpin a crate or two and sniping a few metal dogs with my xbow... Each lever is divided into 4 smaller gaps, with some minor rewards for reaching each one, and each gap in the first lvl took about 6-7 "long" quests to do iirc...

Unfortunately, the way my toon is set up, he gets much better over time, especially after getting things like weapon finesse.

The reactions are so different on combat mainly for two reasons:

1) There is a VAST difference in effectiveness between some classes - the most extreme is probably my rogue to barbarian example. One can solo easily, the other cannot unless you are a D&D system wonk AND really good with the combat system.
2) The combat system DOES take a lot of player skill, more than any other MMOG ever. This is both a good and a bad thing. It's a good thing because it's what we (me) have all asked for. It's a bad thing because the gameplay is not as tight as I would like it (like Strazos mentioned) and because the average MMOG player cannot find their genitalia with a road map and a compass. You're going to hear a lot of hate it/love it responses and very little in between.

I never made level 2 in this game. Part of it was the solo thing, part of it was the networking issues I had early on in the beta/alpha.

I agree with Margalis that is NOT ready for February and will not be.

But you well know that's not the important question.  It's not 'is it ready to ship' but 'will they ship it anyway'.

That's the one I want answered.

I suspect they'll ship it anyway.  It's at least 10x better than SWG was at release, though.  As in, it's actually playable in its current state, none of the classes are completely broken, and it has content.

One of the big problems is there is just not enough in-game information. There are a lot of numbers and effects and traits and feats and whatever and if you aren't a D&D expert you have no idea what they hell they are.

Is a sword of +2 +2 to damage or to hit? Or both?

What does "faith shield" do?

What is "max dex bonus"?

Shields have like three different stats on them, and I don't know what ANY of them mean.

This game is for D&D nuts, not regular MMOG folks. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is insane and/or a D&D nut.

They have tooltips.  Half the stats in the game confused the hell out of me at first look because they aren't in PnP (like all the weird shield stuff that they added in to support the realtime blocking stuff).  But then you hold your mouse over them for a few seconds and it pops up a little thing telling you what it means.

Your character sheet and inventory also have nice little explanations about where various numbers come from - for example, if you mouse over your AC, it breaks down which of it is from armor, which is from special bonuses (like Dodge or size or what have you), which of it is from your Dex, and which is from your shield.  In your inventory, the bottom couple of lines tell you what your to-hit and damage rolls are for your currently equipped weapon, so you can swap weapons around and immediately see the effects of stuff like Weapon Focus or nonproficiency or what have you when summed with the bonuses for that particular weapon.

That's as good a way to do it as any IMO (though in some cases the explanatory text could stand to be beefed up just a little).  If you bury it in help files or other "documentation" it will never get read.  Someone who doesn't bother to read a tooltip sure as hell isn't going to sit down and read a manual.

I stopped before the latest updates but I never say any of these handy tooltips. I saw tooltips, but only very vague ones, not any information on subproperties of items or anything like that. Most of the potions had no tooltips at all, I had about 10 different types of potions like shield of faith where they either didn't havea tooltip or the tip said:

"bestows shield of faith"

That's great. How long does it last? And WTF is shield of faith?

If you examine the potion, it pops up the little informative window that says what the item does (namely, bestow Shield of Faith)  When you mouse over the phrase "Shield of Faith" in that window, it tells you that this spell grants a bonus to your Armor Class. 

It might be nice if it gave a bit more info, but knowing that it boosts my AC in some way is good enough to know what it's useful for and what it isn't.  And if you want to know the exact bonus you can always quaff one and then check your character sheet.  (One of my favorite things in PnP was always experimenting with items to figure out what they did, rather than using Identify spells - YMMV.)

This was in as of the Fileplanet stress test weekend thing that happened a few weeks ago.  I noticed them too.  It's admittedly possible to turn some of that off, and maybe some people did.

Alkiera

Hmm that's really odd. Does the tooltip take like 10 seconds to show up or something weird like that? I know I tried mousing over everything numerous times. Maybe it's some wacky bug or something.

By default it's something standard like 1 second, but like Alk said, it's configurable.

The tooltip comes up, but the stuff with any actual information requires that you "examine" the item by selecting it, then clicking a button on the way too big targeting circle (the little magnifying glass icon). I really hated that targeting circle.

You can also select it and push Z.  (I never touch the targetting circle because the butons on it are confusing.)

Which is the entire crux of the problem. DDO's interface is in bad need of some love.  It's non-intuitive, clunky and as uninsipiring as the artwork for the game.  I see what they're trying to do with it, but they need to refine it some more.

Polished UI is nice, but it's not what I'd call the crux of anything.  If I have to choose between a slightly clunky UI and camping troll penis spawns, I'll take my clunky UI.   :wink:

You're just prejudiced against troll penises.

It's true.  I'm a trollophobe.

The targeting circle is pretty crappy. It's big and half of the stuff that appears in it is dopey or incomprehensible. Like if you click on some armor it shows up in the targeting circle zoomed in on an arm or something.

The UI isn't great but I don't really care too much. The game has far more serious problems.

Some of you have probably seen that thing about crates in games, and how the presence of crates indicates lack of creativity. It's funny because every dungeon has hundred of crates stacked around for no reason.

It was the crux of the issue at hand. That being: Margalis didn't know what the hell was going on.

The game itself has more problems than just UI, yes, but at least is somewhat fun if you don't mind the little things.  To me, it's too many little things to justify a purchase or a sub, but i can see the appeal.

The UI has a thread on the offical DDO forums lots of long detailed replies from fans who obviously want DDO to succeed and have an improved UI.  Personally I'd be tempted to explain it in graphical form using a DDO UI screenshot with an arrow pointing to a WoW UI screenshot.

It really confuses the hell out of me why you let potential customers stress test DDO before the UI is polished, it certainly put me off. 

I'm also baffled as to why they designed the game so players use the Inn's as a central location for healing when characters currently (unless they fixed it) cannot sit down in a chair.  I could sit on a chair at an Inn in UO (released what 54 years ago?).  My character always sat down before logging out in WoW.  Why is sitting on a chair an alien concept in DDO?

The above two points are extremely minor compared to the overall design but my first 30 minutes playtime were filled with "wtf are they thinking?" moments, it's distracting and I certainly wasn't impressed.  If I bother to try the European open Beta it will only be after reading about major UI improvements.