All Posts by BTime

I've been enjoying the new housing, but as a casual player I am kind of irked by having weekly upkeep.  Had those numbers been monthly or even bi-weekly (like most people's paycheck) it would have been better received.  Turbine has set it up so that you can pay the upkeep in advance by a few weeks, but what about people that go on an extended vacation, or kids that work summer camp?

I really do like the neighborhoods and hopefully Turbine will give us the ability to expand our dwelling at some point.  My Small house feels really really small, and the existing hooks only allow for so much placement and not being able to rotate furniture seems like an oversight.  I can't even put chairs around a table as there is neither enough space or existing hooks to place them  =(

I actually enjoyed a lot that beta had to offer, however the game still felt incomplete at close of beta.

BAD STUFF
Combat was good, but WAYYYYY too fast (twitch combat indeed). Once you fight skeletons, it begs to ask, when did Skeletons get jackrabbit DNA? Really wish they'd slow combat down just a little.

Quest Instancing; The griping on this is way overblown. Yes, you can (and may need to) repeat quests, but if you actually do all the quests in the game and take the time to enjoy the settings & challenges DDO offers a lot of fun. I do think it is important that these games also provide an outdoors area for players to wander, which is lacking here. Granted that I don't want to walk forever to get from point A to B, but on those days were I don't really want to be in a party it would be a good place to solo.

Loot; The Beta started off with players being able to gain really good loot. By the end of beta, I hadn't replaced any of my main gear in over a month. It concerns me as while my gear was decent, certainly not Uber.

Pawnshops; Best idea on the Beta forum was to move pawnbrokers into the Bigtop. This would remove a bunch of unneccessary walking from house to house to house, AND with all players going to check the shops in the tent you'd get a feel that there were more than a dozen people playing the game.

Lag; It was Beta. They may have it resolved when the game goes live. Guessing they'll pay out for more bandwidth for the release date.

Rangers; Poor lads are totally borked. Mostly due to the ineffectiveness of archery during the entire beta. If only combat were just a tad slower and archers just a little faster on the draw..

Paladins; Also felt like an afterthought. At end of Beta they were much better, but still not completely defined. Turn Undead? What's that? Smite? Why?

Character Creation; Compared to CoH/CoV is quite drab. D&D may have "30 years of experience", but the design and execution of feats from Pen n Paper is pretty sucky IMHO. This is something Turbine probably could have done a bit better than WotC/Hasbro. The Feat tables are, and have been full of chaff since it's implimenation. Snake Blood or Cleave? Hmmmm.. Facial details, pick one of 4 scars. Um, yeah, I'll get right on that.

Alignment; Seemingly has absolutely no effect in play, excepting for people that are Neutral. They get access to better gear. It would be nice to actually have interpersonal skills actually have an impact on NPC's.

Items; During early Beta I'd managed to get a Ring of Featherfall. At late Beta players were getting items of Featherfall that had spell charges on them. That is so abhorrent to me that I decided it was the straw which broke the camel's back as to buying the game. Whee, I'm falling a 1000 feet, I should probably activate my widget of FF. Ooops, too late *splat*. Stupid.

Dungeons; A partial knock. Each is handcrafted (which is cool). Downside is that all the traps/shrines are consistent (which is bad). Once you know where a trap/shrine is, it is always the same type of trap in the same location. If you're in a group and one person has done this Quest numerous times, people will just zerg through and destroy the gaming fun for new players that don't know it. You know there's a problem when the Fighters are always running in front of the Rogues. A little Randomosity (tm) of trap and shrine locations would be very welcome.

GOOD STUFF

With all it's shortcomings, I freely admit to having a good time during Beta.

Pace; Even with twitch combat, each dungeon crawl takes time and gaining a level has significance. A lot of impatient people will likely not like this game for that reason alone. The good news is that the people that do stick around will be having a great time playing in Eberron.

Warforged; Disliked by a lot of Beta players. I'd played with these on a few occasions and found them to be fun due to their differences. To play with them, you have to step outside the box a bit and think different. We formed a complete party of WF and had a hoot. Warforged should have their own Inn (garage?) in town, someplace they can get away from the "Fleshies". hehe

Graphics; The world looks pretty damn good depending on your video card of course. Integrated graphics on your PC? Sorry to hear that =P

It's D&D; Mostly. I think they did a pretty decent job keeping it tied to the source material. Though they could have evolved it a bit more IMHO. Less a fault of Turbine, more a fault of D&D's stagnation from 2.0

Grouping; Never had to wait for more than 5 minutes to find a group to play with. The search tool for player/party were effective though perhaps a bit shallow. Want to know the race of who/what you're recruiting?

Keybinds & VoiceChat; Greatly implimented and better support than the other online games I play (are you listening City of Heroes?). Their implimentation of VoiceChat was still being fleshed out, but when it works is really good.

Complexity; As a player of CoV/CoH, often I find myself wanting more. In CoH you spend the majority of your time running around and bashing the bad guys, which feels very vanilla after awhile. With DDO, each player's abilities have more weight. Rogue, Cleric, Fighter, Paladin, Barbarian, etc.. Each archetype is valued, and a party can only consist of up to 6 players.

Group Game; By design it's meant to be a group game, not a solo game. Sorry solo players, but this isn't the game for you. It's the game for people like me who came from Pen and Paper, who enjoy social interaction and late-night gatherings with your friends around a pizza and soda. If you're that interested in solo content, why are you in a MMORPG in the first place?

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DDO will do well, though their first couple of months live will probably hit them hard as I predict a lot of people griping about paying for a game that's still in beta. They'll get my money and monthly fee at the first major release assuming that DDO shows signs of evolving for the better.