D&D Online

I am going to be doing an interview with the folks over at DDO. I would like your assistance. If any of you have a question to suggest, please stick it here. I will select 2 or 3 to add to my questions.

Might seem like a stupid question...

But I'm mostly wondering how much character customization there will be? I like to be able to have a nice, unique look, instead of turning around every corner and seeing my face and body type.

This could also spread to armor, clothing, weapons etc. Will there be enough unique looks in these areas so everyone doesn't look cookie cutter?

I have faith they will get everything else right though :)

1. How do you plan on making the game challenging enough to be fun without the tediousness associated with challenge in many current mmorpgs?

2. Is there is any possibility PVP will be included at some point in the future?

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Originally posted by Valarauk
1.

2. Is there is any possibility PVP will be included at some point in the future?

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Turbines already answered this question on the offical DDO board. They said that in the future after release they may possibly add in arena's and the option to duel

Heres the actual qoute.

Xundau
Since we opened up this site, one of the most-discussed topics has been player vs. player (PvP) gameplay -- will there be PvP in Dungeons & Dragons Online? If so, how will it be implemented? Full-scale PvP areas? PvP servers? Duels? Arenas?

PvP is an important component of many massively-multiplayer games: Asheron’s Call, Shadowbane, WWII Online, Dark Ages of Camelot, and Star Wars Galaxies are a few examples. As such, it's natural that the question be asked about DDO, and it's something that we've thought about since we first started working on this game early last year.

Spurred in part by all of the community discussion, we've gone ahead and made our final decision. I'll go into the details of the decision below, but the short answer is this:

PvP gameplay will not be a part of the initial launch of Dungeons & Dragons Online.

I think we've been pretty clear from the beginning that DDO was never going to be a game with a heavy PvP component. If this wasn't explicitly stated, it's always been there between the lines -- our focus is on party-based adventures, dungeon crawls, a living city, and an epic campaign. Not large-scale PvP combat.

The strongest argument for this decision, in our opinion, is the fact that PnP Dungeons & Dragons has never been a PvP-oriented system.

Yes, we know that the bad guys in D&D can be human sorcerers as easily as they can be, say, owlbears. But in the PnP tradition, that evil sorcerer is played by the DM, not another player. And while PnP sessions that pit characters against each other can be fun for a temporary campaign that lasts one or two sessions, the classic D&D campaign is all about the characters working together (or mostly together) to solve their problems and advance the story.

Now, it's true that some of the problems that exist with excessive player conflict in PnP D&D -- namely, having only one DM for two or more opposing groups of characters -- are not as much of an issue in DDO, where our server acts as the DM for all characters. This is why PvP is something we discussed in depth during the early stages of development.

But the thing that we kept coming back to was that PvP gameplay just doesn't fit our idea of D&D, either in a PnP format or a massively-multiplayer format. We know that some of you are going to disagree with us, but ultimately it was not a good fit for Dungeons & Dragons Online.

So that's our explanation for not having a heavy PvP component. But what about a light PvP component? Just because the primary focus of our game is the PvE campaign, that doesn't mean that we can't have some PvP on the side, right?

We didn't decide on this one until more recently, but the decision ended up being the same -- we aren't going to have duels or arenas in the initial launch either. The primary reason for this is that the D&D rules aren't really balanced for one-on-one fights, and we don't want to have to mess with them in order to make dueling work.

One of our key development mantras is that we're keeping the game specs tight -- we're not doing everything, but what we are doing is going to be really, really good. I really wish that we could be all things to all people (it would make my job a bit easier), but unfortunately we can't. To those of you who were looking forward to PvP in DDO, I sincerely apologize, but we honestly feel that this is the best decision for the game as a whole.

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Originally posted by esclavo
Might seem like a stupid question...

But I'm mostly wondering how much character customization there will be? I like to be able to have a nice, unique look, instead of turning around every corner and seeing my face and body type.

This could also spread to armor, clothing, weapons etc. Will there be enough unique looks in these areas so everyone doesn't look cookie cutter?

I have faith they will get everything else right though :)

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That question has been asked alot! lol. One of the offical answers from turbine.

''Xundau
Here is a brief behind-the-scenes look at how D&DO handles the tech art side of character customization.

The visual look of an avatar is determined by the following elements --

1) The first element is what we internally call a "jumpsuit". The jumpsuit normally is correlated with your basic armor set: leather, chain, plate, etc. The jumpsuit is a texture.

2) The different armor sets are not composed solely of a jumpsuit, however. They also include actual geometry components that can change the geometry of your character's look. These components generally can affect your chest, legs, and arm. We internally call these components "gear sets". Certain gear sets correlate with specific unique armors, others with either mundane or magical axes of treasure.

3) Finally, your avatar has a choice of helmets which changes the geometry of the head.

As for Warforged, they will be able to customize their avatar in the same way as the other races; however, in many cases they will have a different set of options of customization.
There will also be options for customzing your character's facial features, hairstyle, etc. We'll talk more about that in the future.''

Hahah, thanks for answering my questions nooblet. I do read the DDO boards, but there is just such a vibrant community there that the boards have soooooo much information. I miss a lot of it.

I have so few questions about the development of this game, simply because I have so much faith in the developers to put out a good product. Hopefully this faith isn't misplaced. From what I have seen so far, the developers have been so open with the DDO community that I can't help but believe they won't purposely "screw" anyone, at least without explaining the hows and whys of what has been done.

Perfect example is when they explained why they chose their spell casting system. After reading that notice from a developer, I knew this game would be for me. He was open and honest and even knew that their decision might be considered controversial by the hardcore pnp folks.

I have noticed a few people that have "whined" about alack of communication from the developers, but obviously these folks haven't ever dealt with the SoE propaganda machine before. The developers of DDO are leaps and bounds better than SoE when it comes to communicating. They don't sugar coat or try to cover anything up that I have seen.

Anyway, sorry for detracting from the original purpose of this thread :)

This is just the first time I have been so excited about a game in the making.

DDO seems very quest-oriented, and from what I've read the quests seem a lot more detailed and have a bit more meat to them than your typical MMO.

So, my question would be: Roughly how many quests will be available at the game's launch?

Talking about quests, I'm also curious about the numbers there will be at launch... and will some of them be 'repeatable' (D&D is usually not about this, but how will DDO make sure the interests level stays decent and we don't end up without nothing else to do after a couple weeks) ? What's the "frequency" at wich new quests will be added?

What about the average time it takes to complete a quest? Will there be 'multiparts' that we can continue on more than one night of play, like 'modules' in D&D ? What happens if someone has to log in the middle of a quest? what if all the group needs to log out, will they need to start from the begining again?

Will the instance be 'tuned' to the number/levels of players that are in the party? Is 6 a definitive number or ca we hope to go as high as 8 (wich is a perfect number as far as I'm concerned).

BTW, sorry if these are all 'old' and were asked more than once.. I was'nt expecting much from this game until last week's vids and news.. my hype level is now over the top but I'm a 'noob' as far as information related to it is concerned! ;)

oh.. another one.. will some of the 'monsters' be intelligent enough not to get 'lured' into the traps? It's a neat thing to be able to do so, but I sure would'nt want this to become the 'easy way' out of all the instances..