Strake wrote on Jul 15^th, 2021 at 1:12pm:

This looks cool and might be enough, in concert with the DDO nerfs, to push me into a New World.

I'm interested in hearing your report, Strak.

Every new game makes me wish Wildstar had better questing, builds, and itemization. They had so much so amazingly right in that game. It felt like the first "complete" MMO I'd ever played. Everything was fleshed out. Almost everything worked. All systems had depth and nuance. The environment was expansive, astounding, original, and vibrant. Crafting, and mining was fun. Housing was crazy awesome (haven't seen that anywhere). They addressed many of the creature feature issues of most MMOs. It was a true sandbox, with rewards for things like scouring the environment's limits and playing Mario.

Unfortunately, it wasn't perfect. It was a button masher. While dodging in combat was a real and valuable thing, fighting eventually devolved to cycling between the numbers on your keyboard in the same pattern over and over. Items were nothing more than green and red numbers. There was no character customization in terms of stats, you just picked a race and class and fiddled with their appearance. Group play was almost unheard of unless you were in a guild.

noamineo wrote on Jul 20^th, 2021 at 3:45pm:

Closed beta started today at noon, I'm still at work. I'll try logging in tonight.

Back when I played DDO... over a decade ago... I would qualify the combat as skill-based. Considering, say, melee characters, I didn't just run into combat and start hitting 1-2-3-4-5 1-2-3-4-5 1-2-3-4-5. I'd run in, grab aggro, throw an intim, trip someone, cleave, great cleave, stun, block, swing. Player and mob position mattered significantly - if you turned around, you wouldn't hit. If a player or non-player target moved, it didn't get hit. Every melee character I had carried upwards of a dozen different weapon sets to handle the large variety of mobs one would encounter in any given dungeon - blunt, slicing, or piercing, various greater banes, specialty weapons like vorpal, banisher, paralyzer, etc.  Even how you attacked mattered - twitching after the second or third (I forget which) swing to reset your attacks resulted in higher DPS.

Every game I've played since has had exactly the same combat. Age of Conan, Neverwinter, DCUO, SWTOR, Wildstar are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. It didn't even matter what class you were. Engage mobs, repeatedly cycle through the same hotkeys to build up and expel a power bar. Every. Single. Encounter. Some allowed movement and position to matter - Wildstar in particular, though it was all explicitly telegraphed by zones on the ground. Imagine a red area on the ground warning you that Velah is about to spew fire. Fucking dumb.

I'm not looking for Street Fighter levels of combat, but I definitely don't want Dragon Warrior combat.

noamineo wrote on Jul 20^th, 2021 at 10:20pm:

Spot on. DDO - at least as I knew it back in the day - hit the sweet spot. Phone it in if you want, or be a rock star and impress all the ladies.

noamineo wrote on Jul 21^st, 2021 at 3:17pm:

From what I've seen, there have been a lot of changes, but I'm not sure how much they impact that feeling of "active combat." I suspect not too much, but I don't know.

For example, I think there was some change (maybe called grazing hits?) that bypassed AC or something like that, the changes to THF/TWF/S&B, fortification bypass. It sounds like there have been a lot of other changes, such as changes that now require everyone to be meat sacks with tons of HP, the introduction of self-healing (cocoons? I only know what I read here and there).

------------------------

New World had sever queues last night, so I never logged in. Maybe tonight, though probably not - need to catch up on sleep.

Strake wrote on Jul 21^st, 2021 at 4:20pm:


Most of what you're talking about are "under the hood" changes, didn't have a lot of impact on the active parts of combat. The biggest problem was power creep and out of control DCs. Basically if you didn't build your character entirely around trip(taking every available point from feats, skills, items, etc) you didn't stand a chance of tripping anything. And lots of mobs that are just straight up immune.

HP bags? yeah? thats the fucking retarded "reaper" difficulty where even trash mobs can randomly hit you for 5,000 damage. I just don't bother with it. Its dumb.



Strake wrote on Jul 21^st, 2021 at 4:20pm:


Well keep us posted.

Strake wrote on Jul 21^st, 2021 at 6:42pm:


Balancing the rewards for smart building isn't easy for any game. Combat is still pretty good in DDO compared to alternatives.

What I've found particularly lacking in other games is loot appeal. I looked forward to opening every chest, picking up every last quest reward. DDO has - or at least had - the coolest gear. So many crazy combinations of things, and the named loot always seemed to have a backstory or hilarious description (think chattering ring). And there were just cool-ass effects like vorpal or paralyzer or banisher.

I bet a lot of you don't remember when paralyzers ruled the world. This was back when they were still super rare. They would hold a target on hit for 3 or so seconds, with no immunity afterwards. I'd gather up all the trolls in the VoN 3 entrance, shield block and repeatedly cleave as the rest of the group ripped through them. I was a rogue's best friend.

At one point I managed to swindle Goolan out of a paralyzer. I think it was a battle axe. My favorite thing to do with it was pug up and hear the gasps over voice chat as I used it on slimes.

It was during this same time that vorpal was on crit as opposed to confirmed 20. Shit was crazy back then.

I digress. Every other game, gear is just red and green numbers.

I've been having the exact same problem. I tried out Archeage - you basically had 1 set of "the best" crafted loot for each class, and then all you did was trying to craft better and better versions of it. There really wasn't chest loot so far as I can tell and no named items. I leveled all the way to the mid-50s with a lvl10 sword because nothing better came across my path.

WoW was even worse about. it wasn't just class-specific weapons, it was play-style specific. If you're a paladin, this is your 1 endgame weapon, if you didn't want to play with that weapon, you shouldn't have been a paladin.

DDO not only offers a patently insane variety of build choices, but basically any character can use any weapon. Maybe not WELL and maybe not as a pure class, but if you want to play a centered monk with a greataxe, its possible.


AND the loot variety is endlessly entertaining AND every item really does feel interesting. Other people will hate me for it but I really do enjoy the gear-tetris aspect of the game.

I failed to log in during closed beta. Oops.

Rubbinns wrote on Jul 28^th, 2021 at 3:37pm:


Well fuck me then.

The problem is when you design a game "top down for pvp" all the decisions are based on "whats good for pvp" and all of the nerfs are based on "what's good for pvp". So even if you turn pvp off and never once engage in it, your gameplay experience will stull be fucked over about once every 3 months by some nerf aimed at balancing pvp.

Strake wrote on Aug 5^th, 2021 at 5:47pm:


There's the concern of the end-game and then how the meta will shift.

I played WoW starting about 6 months after launch all the way to a few weeks before Burning Crusade. At launch despite a "top down" design, WoW was not centered around PvP and you could pretty well opt out of PvP without much trouble.

Then came battlegrounds and the gradual increase in popularity. At that point every patch was a nerf of some sort. You could always tell what classes the devs were playing, because those classes would get a huge buff(particularly to pvp).

I literally never once PvP'd in the entire time I played World of Warcraft, yet PvP still managed to shit all over my gameplay experience on a daily basis.

So whether or not I can play the game at launch - if pvp becomes the focus the game will change over time and that will shit all over my gameplay once again.