| ESRB:GDC: Dungeons and Dragons Online - An Interview with Kate Paiz
While at GDC, Larua Genender had the opportunity to sit down with Kate Paiz, the Senior Producer on Turbine's Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach.
On February 28th, this upcoming Thursday, Turbine and thousands of DDO players celebrate the two year anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons Online. This past Thursday at the Game Developer’s Conference I had a chance to talk with Kate Paiz, Senior Producer of DDO. Not only did I get the dirt on the upcoming update 7, but we discussed the events planned to celebrate the game’s birthday.
First up in the line of birthday presents is a “price and lock” – users can purchase a 6 month subscription at the price of $9.99 per month, a total price of $59.94. This is almost $18 less than the normal monthly fee! This offer is available to past, present, and future subscribers, as long as they purchase during the anniversary celebration.
Next, the anniversary event will be the unveiling of new live event tech first used in Lord of the Rings Online, another Turbine title. The tech allows Turbine to program scripted moments such as changes in the environment, NPC activities, spawns, etc. Enhanced with live GMs, this new technology allows Turbine to offer more impressive – and easier to create! – in-game events. This will likely lead to more live events in DDO, starting with a big anniversary event lasting until the 9th of March. Kate wouldn’t give me many details, but did say “the city of Stormreach will never be the same again, and you can quote me on that.”
Turbine listens closely to community input and feedback; one feature that DDO users have long been asking for is the Wish spell. As this spell is extremely blurry, it’s most easily implemented as an event – and that’s just what Turbine is doing. As another event during the anniversary, there will be an item giveaway for subscribers that is, Kate told me, a variation on the D&D Wish spell.
Next up we discussed Update 7. With the upcoming release of D&D’s 4.0 ruleset, I had to ask if DDO’s Update 7 would include these new rules. Unfortuenntly, the ruleset for 4.0 is still in beta, so update 7 will not feature any 4.0 ruleset changes.
What it WILL feature is the introduction of a new class: the monk. To facilitate the introduction of the monk, Turbine is updating the new player experience – if you want to reroll, don’t worry, there will be new content! And if you were a fan of the Harbor, don’t worry; while the tutorial is being completely replaced, the rest of the old content will remain; you just have more content to choose between, now!
Of course, they’re not ignoring the high levels either. This update will introduce new raid and wilderness areas. The content will be a continuation of the Shabarath invasion; while I didn’t get much detail on the raids, the wilderness area will be a vast underground space with lots of little spots of beauty: crystals and waterfalls will adorn the cave, but it is an invasion area and it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
If you’re a DDO player who likes crafting, there’s more good news with update 7: crafting will be expanded into the main game, making it more accessable to lower levels and non-raiders.
Looking farther into the future, Kate told me that we could expect druids and half orcs near the end of the year, as well as another level cap raise to 20.
Hmmm.. surprising feature coming up? Why do I bet they are going to allow players to make their own content...
They really should though. Once they allow that then they will get more people I bet.
They could lower the price to FREE, and i doubt id go back.
I don't see how it would be possible for them to easily quality control user-made content. While I would love to see it, and based on NWN, some of it would be fantastic [literally as well as figuratively!], much of it would either suck or be an "I win" button.
On the other hand, crafting at lower levels would be extremely welcomed! I wonder if they'll add yet more %$^&* collectables or just find a way to incorporate the ones currently in game. Obviously, I'd prefer the second. Maybe instead of giving a necromatic gem to Doomdrum for a chance at a lesser undead bane melee weapon [with an at least 80% chance of getting a consumable -arrows, bolts, darts, etc], you could now save 10 and definitely get a melee weapon - and get the one of your choice! The drop rate for shards would need to increase in lower level dungeons [which I believe is supposed to be addressed soon] and other ingredients would need to be added [or just use a Masterwork X to produce a +1 X; +1 to produce a +2, etc.].
They don't have to control it. This is a no brainer.
All they have to do is allow players to create modules. Or adventures, or whatever. Any items that one gets in those adventures, stays within those adventures. So you can carry in whatever you've gained from DDO "proper" but can't just have user created adventures with crates and crates of items to be looted. Problem solved. I think this is what they did with Ryzom Ring as well.
Turbine could develop a toolkit to allow users to create adventures set in any of the DDO "wards" (the quest hub instances) and a special UGC portal could be in each ward to enter a UGC adventure. Easy.
Where to host the adventures? That becomes trickier. Do the authors have to upload to Turbine for hosting? If so, do all the UGC become part of "patches?" Why not let users host their adventures anywhere, like FPS do their custom maps, and if you have the adventure, it will play. If not, it will link to the download site first.
The best-done, most popular UGC could even be purchased (or whatever) by Turbine, tweaked up a bit, and made official.
SWG and Ryzom both did well with UGC. Most UGC is crap, no doubt about that, but on the other hand look at FPS maps and especially mods -- there are plenty of talented players out there willing to put in the time and effort to produce quality content, and there are likely more of them than there are official DDO devs... the amount of content that could suddenly appear would be staggering.
Can't do that - they'd have to create flags for "proper" vs "user" then change the entire program to read those flags, not to mention that the UGC would have to be stored somewhere. There would have to be portals to the UGC created and pointers set as to which you are to be portaled to.
They HAVE to control it - let's say I make a dungeon and fill it with obscenities or ethnic slurs; let's say I make it subtle, so that only a few people who really try can find them - either way Turbine gets sued.
Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE to see UGC in DDO, I just don't think that it is as easily done as some think.
That is something I'd considered, but on the other hand, is the DDO audience (typically more mature that I've seen) paying a monthly fee the same type of audience we see in Second Life (free) creating squadrons of flying genitalia?
There could be a committee, either Turbine, or user-elected (probably Turbine, I don't know that they're "progressive" enough to allow a player committee) to preview and approve UGC.
Loot? Shouldn't be a big deal, the chest/difficulty loot tables already exist, and raid/boss/unique/etc. items shouldn't be available in a UGC toolkit anyway. Or just drop some gold, etc. at the end instead of items, the amount based largely on the difficulty rating?
Mmmm Kate Paiz is hot !
User created modules won't work - missions difficulty/reward balance is a subtle thing, and you can trust most players to tend torwards making an empty room with a kobold, 50 raid quality chests, and 20k xp reward for killing the kobold.
Guys, this has already been done. It has been done in Ryzom.
edit: Well, I thougth i saw something in an interview that seemed to me like they could be implementing user made content based upon the wording how they worded a particular paragrah. However, I can't seem to see that now. So I'll just have to withdraw the suggestion unless I can find a link.
edit 2: ok I found the quote, it was in a GDC interview on this site. They really do all blur together now don't they!
Dungeons and Dragons
Going forward, the company will continue to look at Dungeons and Dragons Online in terms of what the Dungeons and Dragons IP means to players and to potential players. While Lord of the Rings Online takes place in what is very clearly Tolkien’s world, Dungeons and Dragons takes place in the player’s world, meaning that the story of the game is about them and their particular party in much the same way as its pen and paper counterpart.
Over the next twelve months, we are told, we should expect to hear some exciting and surprising news regarding Dungeons and Dragons Online as the team continues to try to appeal to the Dungeons and Dragons consumer.
I don't know, draw your own conclusions - S
and I thought I was the only one who liked homely looking gals. She's deffintely the kinda I'd show off to friends & family, drink beer with, share dirty jokes, and....spOOn!!
Picture? I can't seem to find one.
Sovrath, Developer Diary off this link.... http://media.pc.gamespy.com/media/619/619908/vids_1.html
i would resuscribe if they implemented user generated content. unless of course a better game comes along.
Here's a possibility:
On the WotC site [wizards.com, I think?] they mentioned something about D&D v4.0 including a trial of an optional, subscription based, Internet, DM's tool for hosting D&D games.
Perhaps DDO will be that service - with separate servers for the hosted content vs the current servers. Maybe allowing transfers from the official servers to the hosted ones?