Spybot wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2013 at 11:14am:


A lot of time after it actually, When Corsica and Sardaigne were part of the mainland ( they made a 90° turn due to the intrusion of the Adriatic Micro-plate in the European Plate.

But Plate Boundary geology is a really fun stuff.  ( and it's a huge mess, a huge pile of unholy mess )
You get to find ocean floor at more than 3000m
( Typically, part of the Matterhorn, and some of the mountains around, or more easy to access the pillow lava of the Chenaillet over Montgenèvre near the French-Italy border. )

To majmal:

Over all I can say that this expansion pack is quite excellent. Some of the quests are a bit boring and linear (in the wheloon prison pack, haven't had a chance to test out the stormhorns quests yet), but a couple of them (like Through The Mirror Darkly, damn that quest is awesome) are quite well designed and very fun.

Loot I feel was a bit badly done in this expansion pack, mostly because you get items at level 9 that give just as much damage as the epic elite dream visor that so many people farmed the crap out of EE PoP for. However, I do like how slots are appearing more often on items (like I got a health +8 belt of false life +40 with a colourless augment slot the other day, I was freaking excited), since this allows us to further customize and specialize our pulled loot for our own uses.

The enhancement pass......the EP was very well designed in general (IMO at least, feel free to disagree), and offers a lot more versatility/utility to many builds. One thing I kind of didn't like in the EP, however, was that in general I found that it had a focus of lowering defense (through reduction of    self healing for my sorcerer by losing wand and scroll mastery, THF stalwart defenders/defender of siberys no longer getting some of the top tier defenses from the stance) while still really upping offense (my sorc is much higher in damage since the EP, the burning DOT from fire savant is actually really really awesome, and slaying arrows from AA.....just wow......).

There are still many changes and fixes needed for the EP, like some of the abilities in some trees really need their price toned down, and I feel like the racial tree should be much much cheaper than the class trees, i.e., less points to attain the top tier, maybe make very few abilities cost 2/tier.

On the bugs side, I will say that there are definitely bugs, and some annoying ones at that (like half the time the shrine room in von 1 will close before I can rest before the arena fight), but compared to MOTU (remember mobs and players running into walls making quests uncompletable?) the bugs in this pack are very few, and compared to a couple years ago I do feel like the game is a lot more smooth.

The main problem with this expansion pack, and really with the game in general since MOTU, is that too many systems have been changed, and there isn't enough content. Before menace of the underdark there was TOD, hound, VOD, shroud, ADQ (epic), VON (epic), chronoscope (epic), LOB, MA, many epic adventure packs, some purely high level packs with decent loot (IQ/DD, cannith), and this was all content we could play at cap to make significant character progress.

Right now what you guys on the dev time need to do is really crack down on content, get raids done, get quest packs done, give us more EDs, and generally give us more things to do at end game. At the moment what the game really really needs is more content; not system changes, not more changes to loot gen gear, graphics, sound effects, etc. What we need is more stuff to run.

It has been made clear by producer rowan that he intends to  keep the cap at 30 for a long time and give us more content and end game things to do. This is great, but please get to it sooner than 2014....we need things to do NOW, not in 6 months, we need these things to do now.

Thanks.

kierg10 wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2013 at 2:07pm:


I don't post much here... But Amen to this... Before MotU our guild had raid nights playing all of the old school epic raids multiple times per week. Good times. Now, there's just CitW, and it's value is waning...

More content, and less of FoS's bullshit changes... I honestly don't think I've ever hated a person more that I've never met face-to-face. And that's saying something given the number of trollish encounters I've had since the days of Prodigy dial-up...

I had people I knew still complaining about Epic TRing, and the proposed changing of the experience curve for TRs  right up to the point where the client began updating...Despite it being quite publicly stated that the 'expansion' was not going to change either of those things.

Carpone wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2013 at 4:05pm:

Agree with the above and Kierg10.  Don't care about the bugs too much, but I'll add this:  Loot needs to be semi-difficult to get.  Old Epics were too hard and infinite.  (How many completed eRoSS's are there after 4 years?)  MoTU loot was a bit too easy and eGH as stupid easy.(Epic Blue/White/Black Dragon Armor.  I'm looking at you.  Are you fucking kidding me?)  These new quests are leaning towards stupid easy, too. 

A big part of what Kierg was saying is that we need to be able to play for a long time and still feel progress.  eTR feats and ED feats is a cool way to do this with the experience system.  Loot grinding is the other way.  I don't want old epics or dragontouched ridiculousness, but the traditional raid loot mechanics were solid.  The drop rates on Girds, Bloodstones, Boots of the Innocent, etc and most rare named items seemed to work from 2008-2012.  They were there, people had them, but getting them wasn't as simple as running a chain 3 times on casual and the end reward list hands it to you like candy at Halloween.

More quests.  A better plan for long term enjoyment.  Nobody wants a ton of easy to get loot that is obsolete in 3 months.            

majmalphunktion wrote on Aug 21^st, 2013 at 10:09pm:


Fair enough, Maj.  Do the players know it and recognize it?  Doesn't seem like it.  They want their toys and candy - they don't really want to know why the game runs better.

Better yet, share with us - is it growing the game?  Has it made a difference in retaining players or drawing them back?  While I'd love numbers, some indication would be great.

You've been a  fav among the out crowd and even the in crowd.  As the People's Voice, let me ask, when the game is running closer to how you think it should and the bugs are at what you consider an acceptable / manageable level - will there be enough players left to keep DDO alive?

Terebinthia wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2013 at 5:49pm:


A Third of the herd is done here... I'll probably won't do anything on the mules, but that's still 6 characters done out of 16... ( 19 with the mules )

That's between doing raids and emptying inventories after said raids...
I haven't even started exploring the new stuff.

Terebinthia wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2013 at 5:49pm:


Yeah - I do like the new system, and agree that most of my characters are better off because of it. But I spent a long time getting them to where they were before the update, and redoing all of them, INCLUDING possibly doing an LR or LR20 was not something I was looking forward to or have particularly enjoyed so far.

Wait...this thread is positive?


I'm in the wrong fucking place. I came home and planned on reading the fuck yous before bed.

You guys disappoint.

My thoughts --I agree, more content, less changes. I think we are pretty done with the changes--it is more about going back and clearing up some of the half baked ones.
All missions named after rock/metal songs is a friend of mine's work, and he is my favorite content designer in the building. In close second is the guy who does challenges, but he has not been set loose to go crazy yet.
The next raid is fucking crazy at least on paper.

whothefuckami wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2013 at 9:49pm:


Speak for yourself. I am disappoint.

Kimberlite wrote on Aug 21^st, 2013 at 9:59pm:



Don't do that (NOT directed at Kimberlite, this is broadcast) - not to MajMal - Fuck FoS; but if anyone uses MM's post here later on to justify exploiting, you will fuck up the only communication that can be REAL with Turbine.

karatekid wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2013 at 11:04pm:

Sorry, that has to come second to something more important. Start by defenestrating FoS. Then fix Cannith Crafting.

With regards to your other comment, Turbine could easily close the quest if they cared to do so. Farming VoN 1 right now is taking advantage of a mistake, but it is not an exploit. The quest is completed legitimately, and the end rewards are obtained from the quest giver in complete accordance with game mechanics. QA/QC on loot tables prior to an update is not my responsibility.

It won't ever come close to making up in utility for the gear that FoS nerfed - I don't place a high value on any of the EN items and have no immediate use for any of them. Basically, I grabbed a set just because I could. I've reached the point that a ban wouldn't bother me anyways, but given the crowds around House K last night, there is not not much chance of that happening at this point.

Flav wrote on Aug 23^rd, 2013 at 3:43am:


I don't go in for negativity much (but I do find it entertaining)... strangely, I do find myself coming here before the official forums now. Less muck to wade through and with search and dev tracker so limited now, it is much harder to find useful stuff on official forums...