Been playing since beta, so I obviously think it is worth the money. I also bought GW, which is free to play, decided it was really a single player game, not a MMO, lots of much better single player games, so overally it wasn't worth the money to me even to play for free. So all subjective.

With DDO you get continual development thrown in for the price. Now if I had to pay a monthly fee and then pay for expansion packs on top, that would bug me more.

p.s. I play in Europe and we pay a lot more than $15.

Originally posted by Housam

oh...so 16 levels is like 64 levels

Didn't explain that well, 4 ranks where you get enhancement points as a reward and then the level increase and reward. So a total of 80.

As for time to play, if certain quests were repeated and the whole thing rushed it could probably be done in a month or less. Of course it would be pointless way to play, DDO quests are that different from the standard MMO fair that they really need to be savoured. Plus there are favour rewards which require you to fill as many quests as the highest difficulty level, and then of course raids. You would have capped long before all of these are done, assuming you did just quests and ignored the exploration areas.

Expect the cap to increase to at least level 18, probably 20 this year.

Originally posted by Housam

Originally posted by Unicorns_Pwn

Max level is 16 atm and as far as play time I really couldn't tell you. Only have a Paladin at level 3 so far but having a blast  so far. I kinda feel feel bad I didn't get into this game more at launch.

wow thats low...i thought gw was low...but man...

There are 4 ranks per level. So you can think of the current cap as Rank 80 if you prefer.

Nothing wrong with what you have done. There are a few bits in there you could tweak, assuming you are going for a Dex based Ranger (i.e. going to put the extra stat points in to Dex).

Dex based - Extra points go in to Dex, better reflex saves, AC bonus, ranged accuracy.

Str based - Extra points go to Str, or split between Str/Dex, extra damage (ranged & melee), melee accuracy.

1. There are two ways to go with weapons as you have quite high Str. As Str is used to determine how well you hit with a melee weapon, you may not maximise your ability to hit if building on Dex, but you can consider getting Weapon Finesse feat, which will allow you to use your Dex bonus to hit. It will only give this bonus on light weapons though.
2. Point Blank Shot isn't a bad feat, but you might find there are others that will aid you better.
3. Taking a -1 hit on intelligence will reduce the skill points you get and effects on items will not change this. Not a killer but it may mean you need to concentrate on certain skills a bit more.
4. Skills - this depends on how you are going to play but if it has a * it is going to cost twice as much so these are probably secondary choices, for me the key skills are Jump (getting up high is great for ranging), Spot (you really don't want anything to stealth you and you can warn others), Move Silently, Hide (MS and Hide are only useful if you intend to stealth, and you need to increase both to be effective). If you have spare points Search can be handy. You can probably avoid Concentration as you won't be casting in melee much, Heal is best from an item you switch as shrines, Swim use an item again if you really need it, Listen is covered by a high Spot. Possible secondary choices Tumble, Balance, UMD.
5. As far as saves go your Reflex will be high, good for traps and dodging aimed magical attacks. Will and fortitude you will need to increase through enhancements if you can, and you may want to consider one of the feats.
6. Favoured Enemy is spot on with Undead first, people then tend to go for Giants and then either Aberration or Evil Outsider. Very important this feat as you can get some nice enhancements specific to favoured enemies.

Just a general comment but Rangers are great all rounders and you can improve this by a good selection of potions on you at all times. Remove blindness, disease, curse etc, and of course you wll be able to use heal and remove poison wands.

Take all of that with a pinch of salt, as there is no right way in DDO, just what works for you.

Yep, voice chat is built in.

Originally posted by gestalt11

 

Well the real problem to my mind is things like a hold are a death sentence to a melee on solo and you are unlikely to have decent will saves until pretty high level unless you are a paladin or multi class.

 

 

But you run into holds on normal all the time above level 4 or so, and some mobs will make you dance at level 4.  Then elite gets things like a fireball or lightning bolt.  Suddenly elite is easier than normal because a melee can deal with damage but miss a will save on a hold and you are basically dead.  And the caster have the chance of throwing a hold "diluted" due to expanded spell choice.

 

The ramp up is fine in a group because group dynamics makes holds less dangerous and make AoE more overall damaging than they are solo.

 

It bugs me that sometimes I actually run something on the higher diffculty because the lower one is killing me too often due to saves I simply cannot increase at this point in time or effects I would need that are not available yet.

D&D sort of relies on the DM to iron out imbalances in the rules, holds being a clear example. Also magic users being way overpowered at higher levels (which is straining some of the higher level quests).

I am not sure what they could do about that without drawing away from the core rules even more. Except they could (should?) have implemented limited mana and concentration checks for mob casters.

As it stands soloing really isn't a melee game, you need to be able to put an enemy magic user down before it has a chance to strike back, or at least be far enough away to make an escape. Which sort of means ranged or magic.

Originally posted by spikenog

Originally posted by crmznoutlw16

Another person who hasn't played past level 3 making ridiculous generalizations about the rest of the game...I've never played pen and paper dnd, but i have played my share of mmos and started playing this due to recommendation.  It is by far the LEAST repetitive mmo out there, has a ton of content now due to updates every month for the past 2 years including 6 modules.  If you want a game thats not your everyday button masher and is unlike every other mmo in the market, this is your ticket. Too bad some people don't make it past the first couple levels to see what this game truly has to offer.

While agree with you I do not blame the players.  The developers need to hook people early on so players have a reason to stick with the game after a set amount of levels.  If people do not like or are not interested in the core game play at the lower levels...they are not going to be willing to stick it out for the other things the game offers.

Agree, only one chance to make a first impression.

Having said that I only had to do the first few starter quests to see this wasn't going to be just boring open areas with random spawns, or worse inside areas with random spawns.

As for mana, looking on the brightside, if they had stuck to the core rules, a player would have had to choose a few spells, that they might not be able to use at all, then wait a day to relearn them. Unless they went the NWN nights way and just allowed you to sit around in the quest whenever you fancied it, like that made any sense.

"I will have a sleep here, just outside this room full of monsters, they won't come out for 8 hours or so, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.............. oh look all those big gaping wounds are healed now!"

At least a shrine, implies some sort of divine healing. Which is more likely to heal that leg hanging off than a bit of a snooze.

Originally posted by gestalt11

 

I like the solo experience in DDO too, but you msut admit that when you  compare how they support solo versus how they support group its just plain awful.

 

 

If you solo you either have solo difficulty which is crappy rewards and just plain trivial.  Or you have a huge nonsensical jump in difficulty that only expereinced, well equipped, and well designed characters are likely to be able to do at all.

 

I like the fact that a really good char in DDO can ninja a whole hard dungeon.  You really simply can't do that in an EQ clone jsut because of th math.

 

But there is no doubt the solo support in DDO has very bad holes in it.  Not saying soloing on hard or elite should be easier but the problem is somtimes hard is harder than elite for a soloer because there is literally almost no solo support from the devs.

The problem with DDO is if you are deeply immersed in a quest, grouped or solo, then the experience goes way beyond anything I have felt on any other MMO. It is literally in a league of its own. 

However if you don't have the time, or you can't find a group, or you have exhausted the replayability of a quest it can be quite dire. But to be fair probably not as dire as that realisation you can get in other MMOs that you are repeating an incredibly brainless exercise just to push an experience bar a little further along.

Its greatest strength, is its biggest weakness. But I have a certain faith in Turbine, they took a risk in being different (and possibly suffered a bit for it), but they have so far managed to keep to the original aim while consistently filling that gap, and at quite an impressive rate.

Originally posted by Sevenwind

I enjoyed that, was well written. If that was me it would be, "Oh hi brother (so and so), yep died again, probably see you in a few minutes." haha, I'm learing rogues are hard to solo or I just suck at it. I probably just suck at it.

As for solo runs, have you seen this page?

http://looting.bravehost.com/

 

 

I think rogues have a harder time of it, as ranged combat makes the difference. Sorcs seem to do very well soloing certain quests. 

Hadn't seen that site, but I notice my good friend Disco has one of his vids on it. He did stir up quite a bit of interest in soloing on the European servers when he did Co6 on elite back when the cap was level 10.

If you have a solo build, the majority of quests on at least normal should be fair game.

I have avoided the traps and most of the monsters, killed what I couldn't avoid and have numerous wounds to show for it, my mana is almost depleted and the last shrine is far behind me. I am alone in the dark pressed against the wall, hidden in the shadows, watching the minotaurs move around their camp fire, as the razor cats sleep in the warmth. But I am not fooled, even with the light from the fire I can slip past the minotaurs unnoticed, but the cats hearing is sharp!

Reaching to my belt I pull out a small phial, pry out the wax seal and swallow the bitter contents. My hand seems to blur as I lower it moving unreally fast, the effects will only last a few seconds, but it will be enough. I silently draw an arrow from my quiver and aim it across the fire at the rocks beyond. The noise it makes as it strikes cause the minotaurs to turn and the cats to spring up and leap upon it. They don't see the fast moving shadow slide past them and in to the darkness.

The lever moves easily and the door slides up, I hear  the faint cick of a mechanism and it is enough to warn me to pull my leg away as the spikes shoot up tearing a shallow gouge along the livewood of my calf muscle, but doing no serious damage.

The element of surprise is gone and the heavily armoured minotaur has already lowered its head, its hoofs scraping against the packed earth as he prepares to charge. I am exposed, caught between the trap and the beast no room to sidestep its charge. But I am a ranger, agile and fast, before it starts to move my bow is in my hand,  three arrows ready to fly and my own legs moving as I power forward in to the cavern giving myself room to move.

In the middle of the cavern we meet, the beasts charge not slowed by the arrows that pepper its thick hide. My magic enhanced leap carries me over its back, magic boots thickening the air slowing my decent, allowing me to turn and bury a trio of arrows in to the back of the minotaurs neck. Still its momentum carries it on until it crashes face down in to the spikes, already dead.

As I kneel before the chest, I am happy this is DDO, victory is not just a case of having better weapons, armour and more health than the monster. I can use my own skill and brains to snatch victory from the jaws of almost certain defeat.

*************

Apologies for my poor storytelling, but  players of DDO will probably recognise some of the DDO combat elements, stealth, skills and dungeon depth, which for me makes takes this MMO far beyond the limited play in others.

I always smile when I see people say DDO is not for solo play, for me it is by the best game for solo play, it just isn't easy!

Originally posted by todeswulf

The problem with DDO is the setting sucks ass..it really, really does. One city that isn't quite fantasy and isn't quite science fiction. who in the hell was stupid enough to buy that pitch? Or Hand it to Ken I can't find my ass with a road map Troop to build?

So big city of many doors the rest of the world  (Which could be interesting if they would just fucking show it to us ) of Ebberon is excluded. and they wondered why people laugh at it?

Honestly I feel more like I'm playing what DDO should have been when I play LOTRO...Bree could just as easily be Greyhawk or Ravens Bluff for that matter. People complain about competing with WoW...you want to compete with WoW?  Then give us Greyhawk, Or The Realms..hell give us Ravneloft  if you want to be different, let us explore a vast D&D world, let us have armor that isn't multiple shades of brown ( I swear if one company would create armor sets that didn't make you look like an ass job waiting for a place too happen WoW would be dead)  or makes you look like a banana. 

 I honestly believe that developers purposely look for teh most clueless individuals and hire them to make our MMO's  Go out find some D&D players and have them make your MMO, then you won't have Gabe and Tycho making fun of you.

As for the designers and developers, I think their only mistake was listening to what players were asking for:

• More active combat,
• No long pointless trecks
• No pointless farming or camping
• No quests of the level of kill x, now kill y, go deliver this, rinse and repeat
• Lots of character variety

Of course players generally being arses, when faced with what they ask for they just can't handle it and rush back to the safety of what they know. That isn't to say DDO doesn't have big problems, but it would be better to concentrate on its problems, rather than the players.

That is the main problem with WoWs success, it slows progress, because people honestly start to believe there is a right and wrong way to do things. It is the soap opera of the MMO world, comfortable, unchallenging, effortless and ultimately worthless as a means of evolution.

I perfectly agree, though on a buisness level, there is a difference between competiting with and an attempt to dethrone. Cryptic knew that CoV wasn't going to dethrone WoW (CoH was out first) but with WoW bringing mainstream attention to the MMO market, companies of course want to bleed off some of the new market into their own games. Many people who play WoW very casually have little to no awareness of other MMOs.

Everyone has different tastes, or else there would only be 1 burger. Your burger outlet may be closer to what you want, but if you never heard of it, you wouldn't think to go there. Thats what I mean with the theft of WoW's new customer base. Many of the older, more hardcore MMOers know about upcomming games and are in anticipation of them, but the more casual gamer needs things like commericals and just plain better marketing stratagies to get their attention.

It also probably isn't that niche either, at it has the potential to appeal to a lot of players, that seem unwilling to give it a try. Same could be said for most niche MMOs, it is possible just a sad reflection on the broad mindedness of the average player. The blog post for the cartoon being a classic example.

Originally posted by Reff42

Quality is of course subjective. For the purpose of this conversation, because prices are almost exactly the same across the board, we'll stick to fast food.

A person that has only tasted McD's burgers might think they're the greatest thing in the whole world, but not realize that they may like Wendy's better.

One must say that McD's and Wendy's are in competition, even though their burgers have very different tastes (which for the sake of argument we'll say neither of which is bad) because they are both making burgers.

In the same context, all MMOs are in competition, maybe not direct competition, as say jack in the box is working to improve their break while McD's is working to improve their meat.

However many people WoW brought to the table, everyone is now clamoring to get a piece of WoW's pie. Age of Conan hopes to take a piece by improving on maturity and style, WAR hopes to steal their PvPers.

In a lesser fashion, all games in general are competing, as gamers only have so much time, which is for the most part their accompishment. A player can eat Wendy's while drinking coke and playing WoW, and devote himself to all those things without them competing against one another.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

To go back to the burger companies, there is a small burger outlet near me that does in my opinion a great burger, as far as I know it is a small chain of maybe 3 outlets. Based on the popularity of his burgers the guy that owns it does extremely well on the profits. Does he care that he has doesn't rival McDonalds or any big chain, not in the slightest. At the end of the day if a business is making a profit that is the bottom line.

I remember asking a similar question of one of the NCSoft guys about Cryptic and how they had started developing City of Heroes and what market share they had expected compared to WoW. His response was they didn't, when they started WoW didn't exist as a  live entity, they could see a niche and a potential profit. His view was WoW was an abberation, one possibly of luck more than design, and short sighted to try and base too much on it., especially as very little in WoW is in fact original. Something that is commonly forgotten when people speak as if WoW is some panacea that has always existed.

Returning to the OT of this thread, when I first viewed the comic strip I gave it a lot more credit than it was due, thinking it was an ironic look at Turbine's consistent increase in content and trying to meet what the players asked for, which is normally met with a large amount of bellyaching. Although it was a bit off target, Monks works, Dragon Monks okay just about, but the gold made no sense as anyone who actually plays will know most players have more plat than they know what to do with. Having read the blog, it is quite clear it is just a puerile, 'WoW has more players than DDO!'

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My heart went out to the woman in the recent clip for Dungeons and Dragons: Stormreach. At one point, a green face is shown. Maybe it was a jade face. Anyway, it looked like it was entrance to a dungeon that I had no interest in raiding for ancient wealth. Your dungeon entrance says something about you as a subterranean civilization, and this one said that I could avoid it altogether, and not miss much.

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The reality is that it wouldn't matter if the game were completely incredible. The game could be as good as World of Warcraft, and even this would be insufficient. It would have to be better than WoW to succeed, now. I'm exceedingly curious about both Warhammer and Age of Conan, and both have chosen on multiple occasions to apply another coat of paint. With a head start, years of steady improvements, premium upgrades, world-class art and design, and hundreds of millions of dollars, Blizzard is an entrenched foe. They have a "next generation MMO" in the pipeline, but my guess would be that it's a graphical update to the existing world. There's ten million people playing it. You don't make a sequel to that game. You exult in it. WoW is still - as we suggested more than three years ago, rescinded, and then ultimately reasserted - the apex of the genre. It does this by leveraging the Diablo template, making a game that is essentially a mechanism to obscure the loot table. It is the most humane game of its type, which is to say that it can still be ridiculously cruel.

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I spent almost two hours killing Yeti for their skins last night with Kiko. I needed ten skins, and apparently these were some kind of fucking GM Yeti with no Goddamned skin on them. What is holding these Yeti together, I wonder? Their arctic resolve? Are they literally snow men? Oh, now here is a gourmet Yeti, one with a Roasted Quail, but no pelt. On and on, we slew ice devils. As a miner, I collected copper, and then tin, and then iron, and now I understand they're picking eternium in Outland. Eternium? What's next: Awesomite? You need to leave yourselves room to grow, guys.

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I knew it before, and then in some moment of weakness I let my cohort twist me into this thing. I don't know how much game is here. What I do know is that they have set up a system that allows me to rent my friends on a monthly basis.

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I have never understood why people constantly mistake popularity for quality. McDonalds sell a lot of burgers, possibly more burgers than anyone else, but I think it would be impossible to pretend they are the best burgers, or even a good burger.

I think with MMOs it is more a wish to conform to the norm, a sheep mentality if you like.