ManyCookies wrote on Aug 28
th, 2020 at 2:44pm:
I was talking about something like this :
Bob : Holy shit, this sorc is doing so much more damage than my fighter in quests with fireball, he's just killing everything before I can even touch them.
Joe : Bullshit, casters are underpowered, at cap, my THF build does blah blah damage while my sorc doesn't have the SP to nuke r10 trash.
Bob : Um...okay? I was not talking about r10 at cap...
Joe : You mean...there's gameplay that isn't high skull at cap? *blank stare*
Except that it usually takes a LOT longer for Joe to realise that Bob isn't talking about high skulls at cap.
Oh yeah

that kinda shit happens every fucking day. I think a lot of it is the WoW-mentality - in WoW, lvls 1-59 was the tutorial, and the game actually started at 60(when cap was 60, now its "1-(cap-1) ). That's one of the things that makes DDO actually quite special; its not about "get to cap once, sit at cap until cap goes up" - and a lot of players don't get that. Everyone who complains about the game not having an end game are coming from games where endgame was the game.
ManyCookies wrote on Aug 28
th, 2020 at 2:44pm:
I've never met anyone who actually liked gear tetris. For most players, it's a hassle. And SSG wastes so much time and money making junk gear that doesn't fit into existing sets.
Hi! Nice to meet you. I love gear-tetris.
But of course its kind of a question of making your own fun. I mean, what am I supposed to do, play naked until I get raid gear? That's going to take 9 years between the fucked up drop rates and how infrequently I get to raid(presently: "not at all" for the past 6 months).
Just my pie in the sky idealism but I think not having any 1 optimal gear-set better than only having one. It provides choices, options, not just "check off the boxes until you have the 1 set for your class" cookie-cutter mentality.
ManyCookies wrote on Aug 28
th, 2020 at 2:44pm:
So many build choices, but very few worthwhile ones. All it does is trick newbies who don't know any better, or people who want to experiment.
So this statement kind of brings us back to your comment above about how there is gameplay other than "high skull at cap"; and the nice thing is DDO's diversity caters really well to that.
Its all about the difference between "I am playing this game for fun" and "I am playing this game to make the biggest numbers appear on the screen" - yeah, for some people "fun" is rigidly defined by "strictly the best build/best/gear/highest possible DPS". These are the people loudly screaming that they will quite the game every time SSG nerfs the current meta.
Sure, many builds are not "the best", but they might be more fun, easier to play, easier to gear, different to play, more flavorful, etc, etc, etc. DDO's incredibly deep multi-classing makes it possible to do practically anything.
The opposite end of the spectrum is a game called Archeage where, due to being PvP-oriented, there is exactly 1 build and spec, the one that lets you do high ranged DPS while running circles around the player you are fighting. Anyone playing ANYTHING ELSE is guaranteed to loose. There's also only 2 choices for gear: the set thats best-in-slot and the set thats easiest-to-get. Technically the game has customization, but fuck you if you try and use it.
ManyCookies wrote on Aug 28
th, 2020 at 2:44pm:
Totally agree on what DDO could have been if a better team had taken over. Imagine if we still had huge events like the marketplace one today which changed the game world instead of lazy "okay, go ice skate in town for two weeks" shit.
Imagine if they'd made it more open-worldy instead of instanced? They fucking had the technology in 1998. Most of DDO is based on the Asheron's Call 2 engine: and there's a couple wildnerness zones where you can see what the draw distance is capable of.
I really wanna know how Turbine got WORSE at making games instead of better?