Kalari wrote on Jun 11
th, 2013 at 5:03pm:
I guess I am just being skeptical, I don't want to get my hopes up only to have them Turbined.
Honestly, while I'm bashing at the thing some of the trees are not
that bad. And with a bit of tweaking ( removing the point spent in tree and changing it for a point spent overall for example ) they would be nice.
Now that won't change some of the retarded trees we were inflicted with. Those just need to go.
But I'm still trying to understand why they had to scrap everything and restart from scratch instead of reusing what was already there and making it fit into a tree UI, especially as all the PRE are tree based in their pre-requisites.
I know I wasn't very talkative on the main forum in my answer, it comes to two reasons :
- the logout bug
- the fact that I have to keep tongue in check if I want to keep my posting rights.
So here is the long version :
- Enhancements.
Sorry but what has been shown to us is just plain wrong, as I proved in the Cleric thread it is easy to fit the current enhancements in a tree, especially when it comes to the PRE.
I'm relinking the 30 minute Radiant servant Tree :

If I could do that in 30 minutes, it shouldn't take that long for the game designers to do the same for all the PRE trees. ( and yes it's really rough, but it's way better than the retarted stuff that was forced down our throat. and the nice thing, you barely have to change anything about it... just one prerequisite that changes [ prayer of life is no longer a pre-requisite for RS 2 ] )
I have a few more problems with the enhancement pass, beside the retarded trees.
One is the fact that you can't get back current capstones ( Cleric is the example, The current Cleric Capstone is in Tier 5 of the
should never have seen the light Protection Tree, and if it wasn't obvious everybody is going to go RS... so basically we will loose our capstone )
The Second one is that by putting the stupid Points Spent in Tree restriction to reach the next level you just locks us out of the other trees and restrict a lot the flexibility we had on characters.
Right now we have a Level and a Point Spent Overall restriction ( along with the prerequisites to meet ). With the trees as they are put we will have to spend points in trees to get stuff we want...
Usually that means wasting between 10 and 20 points on useless shit, just because what we want is one or two tier above the last thing we are interested in. Also the points we spend in the Racial tree don't count anymore while in the current incarnation if we spend points on Racial Toughness ( I'll get back on Toughness below ) they count towards the point spent overall.
The Point Spent in Tree limitation has to go away... if you want us to invest in trees put pre-requisistes.
Third, Active ( aka clickies ) abilities... We are already struggling with our current shortcuts and you want to inflict us 10 or more shortcuts to click on ? are you dumb ? we are not squids with 8 fingers at each hand. Look at you opponent of the moment : NWO, they have 1 bar, with exactly 8 clickies, and 3 more for potions... they can afford to put clickies because that 11 things in ALL..
DDO cannot afford clickies... well not more than 3/4 for each character, because we already have too many things to click on... ( and I'm not talking of screen real estate, I have the luck to be able to dual screen, so it's not
my problem, but for some it is
a problem )
I'd say 1 or 2 active thingie on each tree at most, and the rest is passive.
Fourth, Toughness, Stat Increase and Energy <insert relevant kind>
What the hell do you think you're doing by removing/Limiting those ?
If they became must haves, it's because they are must haves... Because if you don't have them you won't survive, you won't have enough mana, you won't have enough oumph to carry out your job in high end content. Toughness gives you 50 ( at the worst ) HPs, That's 10% of the damage inflicted by some mobs in raids and quests at high end... That's the difference between being a soulstone and being alive ( barely ). It has to stay, or you'll have to review all the Epic mobs and lower the damages done.
Energy of <insert relevant stuff> , that's 200 SPs that go poof... that's quite a few heals/cures for a cleric, that's quite a few spells for the others... and for Rangers and Paladin that can be almost a quarter of their SPs that go the way of the Dodo... You'll have to find a way to compensate for that. For me in Cleric terms that means that I go from 3200 SPs to 2850 SPs ( Angel Desny and all ) ... ok, it doesn't matter much, as I always end up FoT with half my SPs left. But if I get my Gimp Cleric, that's 5% of her SPs that go away ( when she is in Angel, 10% when she is in other destiny ) and she will have to use potions, or let raids fail.
Stat Increase, right now we can get up to 5/6 Stat increase between the Race and the Class.
After the change there won't be any racial stat increase, and the class stat increase do not add if they are taken from different trees. Again from a Cleric point of view that's a net loss.... ( and it's the same for other classes. )
Fifth, complete the thing, don't give us a half cooked thing that will not be completed before it gets scrapped. That's basically what is going to happen here, the enhancement system is a change that appeared with LVL 12 to replace the 4 AP we were getting before that ( Two while levelling and two more once we reached the cap at 10 ), and we were told at that time that there would be 3 PRE for each class... some classes still have one single PRE ( and they still are going to have one single PRE even if they have 2 trees, because the other tree is so beyond retard that nobody will spend in it except for padding purpose ).
Sixth, Core Class abilities need their own tree... For example for a Rogue you have 3 PRE roght now : Assassin, Mechanic and Thief Acrobat. Each is just a small part of what a Rogue can do.
But in the new enhancement part of what is core to being Rogue is part of the Assassin/Mechanic tree and some other part is in the Thief Acrobat Tree, and in both case they are deep enough into the trees that to get all the core stuff is not easy, and leads to a lot of points wasted.
Seventh, Spellcraft/Heal/Repair as a way to calculate spellpower has to go, or you at least have to
find a way to make it fit with the class main stat... Consider that for most spellcaster that are not wizards Int is a dump stat, so most of us have 2 points to spend each level on something...
Most spellcasters put them in concentration, because that's where they bring the biggest benefit ( at least while you're levelling, at high end content it's debatable ).
What is going to happens is that after a LR/GR/TR people are going to put the points in the relevant skill... except that again divines are reamed a now hole... as they have to spend points in heal and points in spellcraft to be able to decently cast some of their offensive spells ( well that's argeable, as they are going to be fucked by the trees anyway when it comes to offensive casting ), they are not going to cope well into having to split 2 poor points into spellcraft, heal and eventually concentration, and they are going to end up shafted.
Note : that I didn't talk about repair for the simple reason that long ago, people considered that TinCans, as they were healable by the clerics should be healed by the clerics... so if you really want us to use the skills for spellpower you have to also fix TinCans so that they cannot be healed by clerics and can only be healed by repair spells. ( they are going to howl over that one, and you are definitely going to loose a lot of people over it, but honesty I don't care, just do it )
Guild Decay, I really don't have much more to say... I'm not concerned, being part of a large ( very large ) guild that does benefit ( greatly ) from the changes that have been done.
Pet Peeves :
- Ok, the forum FUBAR thing, you really should just roll back the old forums.
Right now the forums are the most user unfriendly I've ever seen.
And trust me you haven't seen the collaboration shit they are forcing us to use at work... but it still look great and shiny compared to the forums, just because I don't have to long in every 15 minutes, I don't loose my pages, I can do a search, well it might be shitty, but at least it works.
The DDO forums are shitty and they are mostly broken... even a first year Intern in Web programming could do better and fix it faster.
- awesomiumprocess.
rollback the old internal version, so that we won't have to deal with the 7 processes.
Its the job of the web department to make sure they create URL short enough so that it won't kill the ingame browser. It's a limitation they have to cope with it, it's not for the development department to find a workaround for shitty web programming.
It's killing gameplay for people on slow/low end systems. It is also the cause of the many
have to log in twice threads... ( because while the game is spawning the fucking awesome processes it's not talking in TCP and UDP with the server thus generating timeouts )
Another pet peeve :
Bravery Bonus, just kill it... revert back to the old system where you earned more XP by doing quests that were over the level of your party... There's no Retarded Streak to maintain...
People can do a quest on normal, at level to relax, and go do a VON 3 Elite with a party of LVL 5/6 Characters to earn lots of XPs and face a real challenge ( and trust me it's a challenge ).
Right now the normal way to do quests is on Elite, because the sacrosanct Bravery 'Retarded' Bonus has to be kept at all cost, even when the party cannot cope with it... It least to lots of wipes, of bad mouthing and various jerk reactions... It also leads to the disappearance of the LFMs, because people use invite only channels to screen people, that way they know that those they will quest with will be able to carry their weight in Elite.
It also leads the rare LFMs that are not on Elite to remain empty because people don't want to break their retarded Streak. ( I won't even talk about the clerics unwilling to heal on elite with complete unknowns... it's so obvious )
ok, that should be enough for tonight... it's almost quarter to 1 ( AM ) here... and I should be in bed instead of writing this wall of text.