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Dungeons and Dragons Online Impressions
- Title: Dungeons and Dragons Online
- Developer: Turbine Entertainment
- Publisher: Atari
- System:PC
One aspect of the title I know I have a firm grasp on is the setting. Eberron was developed by Keith Baker for a contest held by Wizards of the Coast a few years ago. Since then the pulp action setting for the D&D system has become the company's premier IP. Novels, sourcebooks, comics, and miniatures are all being created with the Eberron world in mind, and Dungeons and Dragons Online is the second work of electronic entertainment to use the setting. You may recall Dragonshard, the D&D RTS title. That too is based in Eberron, but with an (understandably) less immersive look at the setting. DDO delves deep into the backstory of the gameworld. Set in the settlement of Stormreach on the continent of Xen'drik, the game allows you to explore some of the elements that make Eberron unique. The powerful merchant and political factions known as Dragonmarked Houses make an appearance in the game, as benefactors and opponents. Dragons are rare, powerful, and mysterious. While I would have liked to get more of the backstory from the setting's main continent of Khorvaire, there is a definite sense of place in DDO. It's thin, but it's there.
Creating a character is the first of many DDO aspects that reinforce a D&D feel. Attributes are created using the 'point buy' system, allowing a player to build a character to fit a class without relying on random die rolls. If you're uninterested in tweaking a character's skills and attributes, you can simply select a class/race combo and accept the pre-built character the game will provide you. Prebuilt characters all have fairly sane choices made as regards attributes and skills, and if you're not interested in learning the particulars of D&D character creation it's a safe choice to make. All of the D&D iconic classes are available (even poncy bards), along with the typical player races. The Warforged are the stand-out race for the game, living constructs that resemble animated statues. In the game's lore, Warforged were construct troops created for a titanic century-long war. With the war at an end Warforged are emancipated creatures and can fill any role the fleshy races do. While I find them intriguing plot elements, I've heard a lot of player commentary about their inhumanity. It's a fact that the race most often played in a MMOG is 'human', and the unliving nature of the Warforged may make them an unpopular race. Just the same, their inclusion is a powerful reminder of the setting's background. The classes available are typical to what you'd find in most MMOGs; With good reason, as most MMOGs stole their class concepts from D&D in the first place. One class element that might surprise some folks who haven't done table-top gaming before is the role of the cleric. D&D clerics are almost as powerful front-line fighters as your fighter or paladin. They wear heavy armor, kick ass, and take names in the pursuit of their god's goals. Rogues are also fundamentally more useful than in many typical MMOGs. There are plenty of traps in D&D dungeons, and rogues are the only ones who can disable them. Making your character 'feels' very D&D, and sets the stage for your integration into the Eberron setting.
Once you're in the game, you'll find that the D&D setting is the least of the elements setting DDO apart from other MMOGs. Combat is a very different animal than almost any other title in the genre. In a word, DDO combat is realtime. Instead of hitting fight and using abilities as they become available, or simply watching as your avatar filets a bunny, DDO is a click-fest worthy of either Diablo game. Each click is a swing of the sword, and whether you 'hit' or not is determined by your stats. In the corner of the screen you're shown your to-hit roll, which is a random number between 1 and 20 modified by your Strength score. To score a hit, you have to get higher than your opponent's AC, and on a natural 20 you do more damage (a critical hit). In other words, you're going to do a lot of missing. This gets frustrating very very quickly. In fact, it's gets just boring after a while. Tabletop D&D combat is fun because it's abstract, with the blows landing on the screen in your mind. Actually having to sit there and watch the swords swing over and over is more than a little tedious. D&D monsters aren't like the villains of Diablo; They jump around, move out of range, and generally do their best not to get killed. That means that in addition to repeatedly clicking on your opponent you're going to be trying to follow their movements. It's all too dang chaotic to be truly fun.
Besides just poking the baddies, there is actually a good deal of depth to DDO combat. All characters have the option of using some tactics in their fighting. Skills actually play a large part in combat if used correctly. Diplomacy attempts to throw off aggro, making a monster attack someone else. Intimidate is the opposite, encouraging foes to attack your character. Rogues can use the Hide and Move Silently skills to avoid notice, and bypass monsters if need be. If they don't, they can strike from hiding and possible score a sneak attack for massive damage. Rogues can even do sneak attacks in combat by using the Bluff skill to throw an opponent off balance. Magic is more your typical MMOG fare. Wizards, Clerics, etc, have mana points which are used up by spellcasting. Even with that as the base mechanic, the system is very D&D. Spellcasting classes have only a few spell slots, and can only swap out what they have online when resting. Further, arcane spellcasters only know a subset of their available spells and must find or purchase additional spells before they can use them. These elements are all laudable additions to the game, but in reality many combats feel more like a group of individuals doing their own thing than a party effort. Because of the frenetic nature of real-time clicky combat fights are fast and hard to manage. A group comfortable with each other, with voice chat in use, will have a good deal of success. Pick-up groups, though, are at even more of a disadvantage than in most games simply because things happen so fast.
That's what you do in combat. What you're actually *doing* when you play DDO is almost entirely dungeon-crawling. You receive quests from the people of Stormreach, all of whom need help with this or that. Like City of Heroes/Villains, your missions are instanced, meaning that you and your party get to play around with your own copy of the dank basement/decaying sewer/giant ruin that you have to explore. With the missions instanced, DDO dungeons are allowed to do some really interesting stuff. Traps, for example, are deadly challenges that affect the world in real-time. More than just kicking open a chest and being set on fire, razor-sharp blades swing from the ceiling. Splashes of acid fly from spigots in the walls. If you don't have a rogue with you, some traps can be avoided by using your platforming skills to time the gap in a trap's movement. If you do have a rogue handy, the trap mechanisms can be searched out and disabled. The traps are a very cool addition to the genre, but the quests are unfortunately laughable. The thin layer of Eberron that I mentioned above is mostly related through quest text, and what is offered through NPC interaction is cookie cutter and boring. Quests usually have a voice-over, from an intangible Dungeon Master, to spice up your understanding of the situation and evoke the table-top setting. In my opinion, the voice-over doesn't add much. In truth, the storytelling that Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft manage through questing makes the story attempts of DDO look like a student project MOO in comparison.
Besides traps, dungeons are populated with all manner of gross and icky critters. While you start off fighting skeletons, slimes, and kobolds, you eventually graduate to some of the archetypal monsters of the Dungeons and Dragons product line. They're smart, too, with even the dim-witted kobolds doing their best to dance outside the range of your swordarm. You get real satisfaction from slaying enemies in DDO, both because they're a real challenge and because you can stop clicking for a little while. What you don't get is XP. Experience points are only handed out at the end of the mission, when quest objectives are completed. While some missions may have a subquest asking you to slay x number of monsters in the dungeon, each individual kill nets you nothing more than a clear hallway. I'm pretty ambivalent about this design decision. On the one hand, I like that they're emphasizing the quest instead of bashing in a kobold's brains. On the other, I don't feel quite the surge of success for whacking the baddie I might get in another game. Additionally, since the quests are so blah the XP I receive for completing them seems ill-gotten somehow. It's a toss-up, but it mostly feels like they made this decision just to be different.
That XP is put towards your next level, as with all MMOGs. There is a difference here, though, in that each level is a very long time coming. You do gain in power on a semi-regular basis, but instead of gaining a level you gain a rank. Each level is broken down into four ranks, waypoints along the road to your next level. Each rank nets you an action point, which can be spent on a character enhancement. Every race/class combo has different enhancements available to it, and all of them increase specific aspects of your character abilities. (+3 to Search, for example.) With every level being a major milestone, it won't come as a surprise that there aren't that many to gain. At the moment DDO only allows you to achieve level 10, rank 4. You can go no higher than that, but there are plans in the works to add level 11-20 content at a future date. For most normal players this will take a while; the much loved experience penalty is enacted if and when you wipe. If you die and other folks are still alive, they can take you to a resurrection shrine in the dungeon to revive you. Rest shrines are usually nearby these areas, allowing characters to regain hit points and mana mid-dungeon. Besides these rest shrines, the only way to heal HP in-dungeon is with a potion or clerical spell. I hate hate hate almost everything about these design decisions. In reverse order: Long downtimes suck. HP and MP not regenning sucks. It is not fun to sit in an inn after a mission is over watching my hp bar creep upwards. You can buy food and drink to improve this rate of regen, but it's nothing like the regeneration you'd see in other modern MMOGs. Experience penalties are evil. Taking away accomplishment from a player is the worst thing you can possibly do. It's not as harsh an experience as you'll get in FFXI, but it's still frustrating to have XP taken away because of something you may not have even had control over. Finally, their decision to ship with only ten levels is a very bad one. I'll expand on why that is below.
You'll note I've usually said 'you' when talking about gameplay, but that's misleading. I should be saying 'you and your party', because in order to play DDO you'll have to be grouped. I'll say that again so you can be clear on this: It is not possible to play Dungeons and Dragons Online solo. The intention, of course, is to evoke the flavour of a table-top session. The publisher has even included voice chat as a built-in feature to the game client to facilitate team communication. The result is a title that you cannot play alone. Some classes, like spellcasters and rogues, will have trouble soloing even the introductory quest when you first get off the boat. Clerics are probably the best soloing class, as they can heal themselves most effectively, but after the first few 'figure out the game' dungeons they're outmatched by the strength of most monsters. I can't really fault them for deciding to go this route, but it's a very harsh line. Even Vanguard, the upcoming hardcore MMO being designed very specifically with grouping in mind, is said to have something like 15% of its content geared for solo players. There isn't even that much for the individual in DDO.
The one thing I can say without prevarication is that Dungeons and Dragons Online looks good. The streets of Stormreach are beautifully laid out, with a style of architecture that really gets across the character of Eberron. A floating inn out over the water is just the tip of the iceberg; DDO has a truly unique look. Character and monster animations are well done, and the soft lighting that pervades the game gives an otherworldly charm to the title. The visual look does more than anything else to establish the character of the dungeons and city streets you'll be exploring. The sound situation has likewise gotten a good deal of attention, but the results there seem merely adequate. Sound effects are competently accomplished, and the musical track highlights game moments without being offensive. There is 'combat music', though, which I'm already tired of. Combat music is fine in a single-player RPG, but FFXI is the only MMOG in which I find that acceptable.
Another website is quoted in a DDO television commercial as offering "A Genuine Online D&D Experience". Whoever it was that came up with that piece of pabulum has never actually played Dungeons and Dragons. Table-top D&D is about storytelling, camaraderie, and having fun with your friends. Somehow in the brave new electronic frontier, these qualities are translated into meaningless grind quests, chaotic click-fest combat, and swearing over voicechat. I'm enormously frustrated by DDO because there is just so much new and interesting going on here. The skill use and traps are real firsts for the genre, providing meaningful player choice in how to navigate a dungeon and how to do combat. These awesome mechanics are sandwiched side by side with other elements that seem more appropriate for launch-day Ultima Online. There are so many contradictions within this game that it's hard to know which is most confusing, but I have a top pick. For those who will like this game, they're going to just eat this thing up. And when I mean eat it up I mean "grind through the game in about a month or two". There were already characters at max level before the game's headstart event had finished out. Whoever did that payed about fifty bucks for ten days or so worth of play. They undoubtedly started a new character, but because of the simple questing structure there's almost no replay value currently in the game. Thankfully not all is doom and gloom. Turbine just announced that they're already planning to add 15 new dungeons and a raid on a dragon's lair in April. That commitment to new content is the going to be the only thing keeping the hardcore around because there is nothing at all available for you once you hit level 10. There is nothing to the endgame yet; It's all still in production.
So, let's review: The game isn't for the hardcore because they'll eat the content too quickly. It's not for the casual gamer because it's impossible to play on your own. Dungeons and Dragons Online is very specifically crafted for folks playing with other people at a non-hardcore pace. And in a way I think that's a good thing. It's good they have a target audience in mind, and if I were planning on adopting DDO as my game of choice that would probably be a good description of me. Just the same, it's a very bold decision to make. Only time will tell for sure, but I have a feeling it's a decision that will come back to haunt them. In the meantime: If you've got a group of regular online gamers you play with, you and your crew should consider giving DDO a try. It's got some interesting new elements that make it stand quite apart from most other Massive games. Don't be surprised if you get bored of it sooner rather than later, but if you and your group are tired of raiding Molten Core for the hundredth time this should keep you out out of Azeroth for a month or two. Hardcore gamers should stick to whatever they're playing now. They'll eat this title for lunch and find themselves frustrated with the lack of endgame content. Casual players should just keep on moving. If you're not willing to commit the time and energy to the constant search for a group, you won't find anything to do here. At the end of the day, DDO is a game with a great deal of promise squandered by some very confusing design decisions. Now go find your DM and give him a hug.
"Currently Dungeons and Dragons Online only supports certain Windows operating systems. There are no plans at this time to make a Macintosh compatible version."
Guess that means I'll stick with WoW. kthxbye.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I played D&D when I was young -- it was part of the reason I entered the BBS world. Later, my BBS grew beyond single node and many of my regulars played Tele-Arena, a MUD that could handle dozens of users. When the Internet destroyed most BBSes, I played a few MUDs but it wasn't the same. With the BBS gaming, people all lived fairly close to one another, and many users got together on a regular basis. With the Internet, this "get together" is nearly impossible.
MMOGs don't interest me -- the graphics pretty much ruin in. I've thought about getting together with some other "over the hill" D&D geeks on occasion to try table top gaming again, but there isn't enough time for most people to make it a regular scheduled item.
What are the options? I was thinking of an MMOG with reduced graphics (leading to increased imagination) that maybe segregated players into communities where they'd play against others close to one another. Communities might be tied to one another allowing crossover, but requiring the player to want to take the time to travel to these truly distant lands but requiring them to return home before retiring for the day.
I don't know if this is really an answer, but I'm sure there are others out there that don't get into the graphics, don't have time to find others nearby, but still want the chance to have some virtual face-to-face time.
From what I can tell, there aren't any "locally restricted" options for any MMOG, but I wonder if this is the next step in gaming: offering people the chance to play within their true community, whatever that may be. Beyond that, I'd like to see how more imagination can be part of gaming, like it used to be.
Side note: are there any MMOGs that have a graphic interface that is built around a user's imagination? Maybe in between games (or even during games) the user can go elect to redesign a given monster or land or whatever to more of what they see in their heads? I'd think this would add a uniqueness factor that would make the game more playable -- rather than being stuck with the typical same interface, the player has a lot more control. For example: you're fighting Monster X but the monster isn't really what you see in your head. Hit the + key or something and you can scroll through the various monster designs out there (even third party designed maybe) until you see what you like. Same thing could be true for the various land designs and overall world feel.
Although I didnt play this that long myself in the beta... I did enjoy the combat as it added almost like an FPS feel to it, which can separate the men from the boys of just click once and watch WoW, EQ etc. So that was refreshing, and keeping on your toes especially as a melee character where you needed to be close for effective combat. I can see how over time this can get boring but so does clicking your attack bind once and waiting around like a ditz.
The graphics were very good and detailed, and not too cartoonish.
However overall it failed to draw me in, and nothing has since UO/EQ (1), and DAoC.... I dont know if its because im older and dont have the time to commit, the story lines, the environment, quests lack of or too many, etc.....
Hopefully the game will do well, and may be able to draw off some WoW mindless zombies.
I guess being modded Troll for a comment in this story would be a good thing.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
I still play every second week, with the same bunch of people (including a female) that I've been gaming with for about 20 years. Not that it might not be a good game on its own, but I think I'd miss seeing the mischievous look on the DM's face just before he pulls something nasty.
It's also nice having your own mental picture of what's going on, be it accurate or not.
I don't want to give up my funny (polyhedral) dice. I started playing D&D with the "Basic Set", which included cutout "chits" bound into the rulebooks. We had to pick numbers from cups until the game was popular enough that a hobby store within 50 miles could mailorder some dice. I never went back. Throwing dice is the perfect physical connection between verbal roleplaying and throwing spells/punches/ropes. "Saving throw" is so much more real with a real throw. Lots of chance should be automated to smooth flow of the game and keep DM decisions secret. But I want the option of throwing some dice in the game, even if just to burn some entropy to show it who's playing.
Maybe a "Real Funny Interface Dice" controller, where a couple of RFID sensors detect the 3D position of a couple of RFID chips in each die? Or maybe a "dicepad" that images the bottoms of the dice after they roll. Just as long as I can throw some nuggets to pick a number, I'll be able to keep the moves I learned as a kid.
--
make install -not war
LOADING...
problem was that everything was instanced. After games like
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World of Warcraft where (on a single continent at least) the game is
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virtually seamless, the long load times and lack of immersion it created really
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got to me.
So, as I want to feel the RPG feeling, I am sticking to NWN and soon going over to NWN2.
AD&D
I think DDO is more of a mainstream game for the casual gamer, not for the die hard gamers. Sorry, WoW never interested me, if you didn't play daily you lost out on way too much and it was hard to either catch up with friends or find a new group. FFXI was too much crafting pointlessness and it felt like they were leading you on your path all the time.
DDO is just fine to pick up once a week, easy to use, quick to group, and the dungeons are a good hour or two and you can be done for the night.
People either love it or hate it, and most of the people who hate it are on other MMORPG's while the ones who love it have a nice mix of other MMO's and people who weren't playing anything before(like me).
"It's not for the casual gamer because it's impossible to play on your own. "
Huh? Click LFG in the social menu and in about 10 minutes normally(normally much less) you're grouped. What are you talking about?
Sorry, but tell me when WoW gets to this level of gameplay(not quality, not features, not content, just the quality of actually playing the game, I know WoW beats it on features and content, and quality is up for debate since it's still in it's rocky start, like WoW was).
My system isn't that bad but when you are stuck there waiting for your character to respond 10-15 seconds it can get frustrating. I tried lowering my graphics settings and that only helped a bit.
Until they have a solaris/sparc version, I'll be sticking with text MUDs. kthxbye. Sadly, the majority of games developers dont seem to give half a shiznit about platforms other than WindowsXP (and vista soon) .. im not saying they SHOULD care about porting thier game to a serious minority platform (such as mine), im just pointing out that they DONT.
This is the main point IMO that causes this game to fail. Hundreds of people brought it up during beta, and bring it up now, about instanced gaming. The game is fun. But to have to pay monthly for a game with similarities to how Guild Wars is run(with no monthly fee mind you), it is hard to convince myself to get this game. If it was stand alone and didnt have a charge i would probably jump all over it. But this instanced gaming and lack of traveling that is supposed to be "convenient" for gamers ends up making it less of an mmorpg that it already is. If you read the DDO forums you will see this issue brought up time and time again. And the responses are the same flames. But i think its obvious that this is one of the root problems of this title and why it will ultimately be a huge loss for Turbine.
It is not possible to play Dungeons and Dragons Online solo.
Anyone else out there really disappointed by this?
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"In other words, you're going to do a lot of missing. This gets frustrating very very quickly. In fact, it's gets just boring after a while."
What's interesting to me is the philosophy behind this statement.
Perhaps it's a little more realistic to believe one will miss alot during a battle? Maybe it's boring because we've all been spoiled by automatic action gaming that doesn't require much in the way of character dexterity while fighting? I'd like to think that if one maneuvers their character well during a fight, they'll land more hits. And while it still may be abit boring to those used to rapid XP gain, I think it's truer to the original aspects of the tabletop D&D I used to play.
"They jump around, move out of range, and generally do their best not to get killed. That means that in addition to repeatedly clicking on your opponent you're going to be trying to follow their movements. It's all too dang chaotic to be truly fun."
Sounds more realistic to me. Perhaps this game will filter out the less diehard players and leave only the more serious gamers? I wonder if the MMO player-base has grown enough to sustain a game like this where it requires more skill and dedication (as in you'd have to be pretty dedicated to play this game if it's as boring as you've said it is)? Actually, I'd like to think it has, and additionally, I'd like to think that this game wouldn't change much to accomodate the people who want a fantasy MMO where you don't have to be particularly good, you just have to know when to hit the attack key...
I personally hope that this fighting model for MMO takes off and is incorporated in more games...
Two fish swim into a wall, one turns to the other and says, "Dam".
Experience points are only handed out at the end of the mission, when quest objectives are completed.
Good, I say. This is keeping in line with pen-and-paper D&D, the idea that there is offscreen training and what-not involved in actually "levelling up"
But really, anything to get away from the standard MMPORG grind would be great. Why do most games hand out experience as if everyone is playing a fighter? How about doling out XP for using class skills successfully?
Instead of levelling up solely by killing one identical monster after another, a healer should get experience for successfully using healing and protection spells to aid the party-- and the riskier the situation the better. A rogue should get XP for disarming traps, successfully stealing and backstabbing, etc.
Something that seems to be missing from all MMORPGS, is stories. Tabletop role play was about epic stories, and interaction with people on your adventures. MMORPGS seem to be about killing things and collecting loot. I didn't play DnD with friends for getting cool magical swords. After all, all it took was writing in a cool item on your character sheet to 'have it' anyway. Also, DM's are famous for scaling their adventures to the players stats/skills/items anyway, so leveling up was simply a way to keep score, not the goal in mind.
I played such games for *stories*. Things to tantalize my mind, to experience in a more direct role. I look at a role playing session as like experiencing an epic tale that I can have a direct hand in. All attempts to recreate that in a digital form for MMORPGS have failed dismally in my opinion. Even WoW.
Is it so hard to create some gameplay that is more like playing the Baldur's Gate style games? Or Planescape Torment? Most of the single player RPG's manage this pretty well. What about NWN? That game has managed a multiplayer component that has virtually no rivals in the digital age, purely from it's lack of centralized multiplayer, and by allowing players to create their own content. These are all food for thought I think, although I'll stop rambling now about this, as I could go on for a while.
I beta'd this game, and it's not very different from other major MMORPGS (EQ2, WoW). The realtime fighting is the same as it is in EQ2, except you have the choice to manually swing your axe or have it done automatically; there are no advantages to swinging it manually. The game itself is the same as any other with just minor differences setting it out from the rest.
:(. The only good thing is the quests, they spend more attention to the individual quests and it shows in that you'll find genuine puzzles involving moving walls and floor panels, levers and interesting NPCs.
The D&D ruleset doesn't cater for the old tabletop players. It will give you some familiarity, but there's no depth like you would find in MUDs. It isn't very solo friendly, either
But unfortunately, it bores quickly and didn't manage to captivate me as much as MUDs or even EQ2 did.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
"All of the D&D iconic classes are available (even poncy bards), along with the typical player races."
;)
But where are the monks?
Apparently they'll be released at a later date...
NMG
The author only has it half right. There is, indeed, an auto-attack mode, which can be turned on by the press of a hotkey (by default, "1") or by double-clicking on the creature you wish to attack.
What I did not see mentioned in my quick glance through the article is that the NPCs you fight are actually somewhat intelligent. They will move around, try to get behind you. It's very interactive in that manner. You have to keep the creature in front of you, and it's going to try to keep NOT in front of you.
... "I read part of it all the way through." -- Movie Mogul Sam Goldwyn (and some slashdot readers)
You are facing two problems. The first is that it's very hard to translate a paper-and-dice RPG to computer, regardless if it's a MUD, MMORPG, CRPG, etc. The reasons for this are myriad.
The second problem, however, is that you might be confused as to what "D&D" actually is. It's a rules set for apaper-and-dice RPG. It has nothing to do with milieu, setting, or environment. A D&D game could be set in Greyhawk, Forgettable Realms, Middle Earth, or your own setting. It could have every monster in the Monster Manual I and II, or it might have none of them. It might have trolls, but not the typical regenerating trolls. It could have twenty different races, or it might have just humans. The point is, D&D is a set of rules, nothing more.
Now that I've thought about it a bit more, my unhumble opinion is that wanting a "D&D" MMORPG is silly. There's so much a MMORPG can offer, that wanting it limited by a set of tabletop rules is dumb. It's like wanting a word processor to be limited to the concept of a pencil. An MMORPG can use *REAL* statistic probabilities instead of rolling a silly s20. Why use hitpoints when you can now calculate damage based precise hit location, armor covering and layering, weapon aspect, wound types, etc? Even with the grossly simplified and abstracted combat necessary for performance, a computer is still going to give you a combat experience that would otherwise take you pages and pages charts and tables in a tabletop game. And that's just combat! Imagine would it could do for skills such as lockpicking, trap detection, spell research, weaponcrafting, ale brewing and literacy!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
"It's pretty, but it's not World of Warcraft. I like World of Warcraft, and am accustomed to how World of Warcraft plays. The parts of this which are like World of Warcraft are good, but the parts which are different (from World of Warcraft) are obviously bad decisions. I'm going to go back to playing World of Warcraft, and if you like World of Warcraft like I like World of Warcraft, you should just keep on playing World of Warcraft instead of this game, which is not World of Warcraft."
In D&D and even NWN a rogue can do quite well on their own. It's fun to take the sneaky-thinky way rather than the hacky-slashy way. Unfortunately in NWN you only get XP for killing, so you won't have the levels to overcome higher-level opponents if you do it this way. Tabletop RPGs are much better in that regard.
In my opinion, if ya want good MMOPRG play World of Warcraft or the better City of Villains (Heroes). However, I'm not knowick it, it may change for the better as did Guild Wars from beta to final, but then again maybe not enought to keep you coming back..
I'll just keep my hopes up for a MMORPG Diablo...
How exactly is pressing shift to dodge an attack REAL d&d. Shouldnt it be calculated hrmmmmmmmmmmm. This was an okay game till my first fight, then I was pissed. oh and loading..........
Just a question: does DDO provide support for addons as much as WoW (or at all)?
;)
I ask that because, for me, trying new addons is almost 50% of the fun I see on playing WoW. So far I have around 100 to 200 addons installed that I use (and update) regularly, plus 50 or so in testing at each time, most of which get deleted very fast, but some of which end up in my "permanent" list. And the list only grows.
A non-fully customizable & scriptable UI is nowadays something I feel unaceptable for a complex MMORPG. I'll only try DDO (or any other MMORPG) if this feature is present. Otherwise, no way. After all, as my brother once said, WoW is actually a pretty good OS.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
was immersion. When I used to play table-top DnD, what really captured me was the fact that my character was an interactive part of the world around them physically, and more important, socially. If I was the captain of an army and deserted them right before a pivotal battle, the GM made damn sure my character became notorious and was remembered by their former comrades. Sure, MMOs have some really stunning graphics now, but eye candy only goes so far in creating an immersive feeling.
I think a system that would help would be to hire online GMs. These GMs should be given the power to change all kinds of aspects of the game, like geography and NPC status to reflect the actions of the players. If a bunch of players band together and raid a goblin village, any GM online at the time that witnesses the raid could change the village by either adding ogre mercs that the goblins hired or making the village deserted representing a decision by the goblins to relocate to somewhere safer. These companies pay for people to keep up their network systems, maybe they could pay people to keep up the virtual systems, too.
Yes, the game has only been live for a short period of time, but the article is pretty accurate.
I actually enjoyed the combat that came along with DDO as opposed to EQ or WoW. And the mob AI is probably the best I have seen in any of the MMOs I have played in. Those kobolds jumping around mean that you have to chase them, and that's a -4 to hit unless you used a Feat to offset it. They don't make themselves easy to kill. That's refreshing.
While some of the powergamers will hit lvl 10 fairly quick, this game isn't designed around the power gamer, imo. And there is nothing wrong with that. Power gamers will enjoy V:SoH in all likelyhood. If the author only played for a month, I am not sure how many levels they got with a single character. My highest in beta with over a month of time put in on that toon, playing most nights for 4 or more hours, was lvl 6.4, a cleric. Lack of content and the moving of game worlds for the last few weeks hurt grouping, but lvl 7.x would have been my best attempt.
The real problem is the lack of other quests to do, and the diminishing returns you get on repeating quests. There is no way to get to level 10 without repeating many quests. That is just poor planning. I am sure most players that had extended beta time like I did, knew every nook and cranny of the WaterWorks dungeons. We knew all the trap locations. We knew all the secret doors. We knew if we needed a certain stat at a certain score to open a certain door. That's a problem. Just having random traps would have made a world of difference for some of it. The game is too static for its quests and layouts.
I don't mind the lack of solo content. Really, you are playing a MMO game. Why do people have this overwhelming need to go online and play a game where thousands of other people are playing, and not work with any of them? What's the point of it? And who played D&D in whatever form (D&D, AD&D, 2e, 3, 3.5, whatever) with just one DM and one person playing one toon? I wouldn't have wasted my time as a DM creating content for a single person and a single toon. And I hate to see MMO developers waste time creating solo content for a game designed to have thousands of toons online simultaneously. Also, solo content tends to get abused by multiple player groups doing the content because it's easy. I say, no thanks.
Having said that, being with a regular group of people to group with will make the gameplay outstanding. The game is designed with a 4 person group as the standard, but takes up to 6. Get yourself a cleric, rogue, front line fighter, and a caster, throw in 2 of any class as a regular group, and you will quickly become a cohesive fighting group. I found having a 2nd cleric made the game go really fast, especially when you started hitting a lot of undead.
This is no different from WoW or EQ, as well as most other games. Those people that form regular groups with people they know and have learned to trust, get a better gameplay experience. It's the same reason military units train in squads with the same people. In order to be a team, you have to work as one. So, criticizing DDO for not having solo content seems a little odd, when it's the way it *should* be.
One thing the article didn't mention was the different way that loot is handled in DDO. Semi-similar to the COH/V model, you don't get a choice of what loot you get, and you don't roll on it. Unlike COH/V, you can see what others got in a chest if you look fast enough, but you can't say "I want that, I'm gonna roll on it" and have a chance to win it. You have to ask for something, the other person has to loot it, and then you have to trade. Lack of loot hassles made the game a lot more enjoyable. Add in no "bind on pickup/bind on equip" for items (that I ever saw) and you have a lot less arguing. Pickup groups were less hostile due to this feature alone.
It shall be interesting to see how the time goes. I was in the beta for more than 2 months, and purchased the game. I haven't played much due to the stork being close to showing up, but I have enjoyed my time in it. No game is perfect, but DDO got a lot more right than it got wrong, imo.
"At the moment DDO only allows you to achieve level 10, rank 4."
Well you can turn my MMOG up all the way up to level 11!
Played beta for two days. I really tried to like this game, but it honestly sucked. It seems to be stuck in this limbo between a real MMO and an NWN style game (but without the awesome toolset), but seems to lose something from both. It simply didn't feel like an MMO, the UI wasn't grand (compared to my customized WoW interface), the "everything is instanced" was overbearing, etc. At the same time, it didn't really feel like I was in my own personal adventure either. I really dislike the Eberron campaign setting to boot, so that didn't help.
Basically, I think there was a lot of blown potential. It isn't a game I'd pay $15/mo for, and definately not a game th at was able to pull me away from WoW.
http://www3.kingdomofloathing.com/login.php You know it is...
They ruined AC, they ruined DDO, they are going to ruin MEO, they are the Uwe Boll of MMORPG's. Actually I take that back, AC was *amazing* until TOD. Even though it was a sad shell of it's former self for the 2 years leading up to TOD's launch it was still amazing.
I do applaud the makers of DDO for not going the easy route by making a clone of EQ with a D&D label slapped on it. He does have some valid points, but DDO is not EQ or WoW. Stick with those games if that's what you like to play and let this one be decided on its own merits.
On the subject of humans.....I believe it's less a social statement and more of a power gaming statement. Humans have the best "long term" build. While the other races have interesting bonuses, few outweight the almighty bonus feat/bonus skill points. And as was said, you need a team, unfortunately, you can always guarantee yourself a team...so you need to build a power timmy if you want to get your play in. As for graphics and sprites, having played WoW were just about every piece of gear has an effect on your character to go back to the rather lame "well your armor changes...and it looks like everyone elses" sucks. Also XP debt isn't that big of deal in games where you can go grind and "fix" the damage. Unfortunately, since there is no way to grind, the only way to fix the debt is to replay a mission. That doesn't seem very table top to me. I've never turned to my DM and asked him if we could replay a module.... Finally, and most damning of all...is that the instances are the same every single time. To the point that I was casting spells around the corner to catch creatures as they spawned on my screen. Not a lot of replay value in that. ONE MORE THING: What's with the walkways without guard rails? Falling to your death, because you slipped off the stairs is lame. LAME. WoW did this in the beginning, then they went back and fixed them. Seriously people, WoW is not perfect...but if your building a brand new game learn from someone elses mistakes!!!
Does anyone remember the Pool of Radiance DnD series of games for the Commodore 64 and Apple II? This, in my estimation, was one of the greatest DnD games to date. Sure there is no online play, but the group combat was marvelous, the stories were compelling, and I could get right into the action of DnD style group combat without much hassle. Is there any modern DnD game that similuates group combat like these old titles? I hate these new first person dnd games where the essence of group combat is gone!
Horns are really just a broken halo.
http://saveie6.com/
http://www.sca.org/
There are local chapters damn near everywhere. A whole lot of us, at least "older" folks, got into this THROUGH D&D.
A lot of my SCA buds do games like D&D on a regular basis.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Heh, funny you mention that .. sadly my indigo2 only has a half-working linux install at the moment, no irix ;-)
Yes, you can have the illusion of story, if you ignore the fact that the "story" isn't so much progressing as resetting for the next person to come along. But in the end, an MMO is more like one of those rides you see at Disneyland, where you sit in a little car and move through an endlessly-repeating animatronic "story time."
Maybe some day, let us hope, someone will be clever enough to figure out a way to create a virtual world that is dynamic. Until then ...
Sometimes realistic gets dumb. Eating food in EQ was realistic but it was a pain in the a** after a while and served no purposed to further the storyline or the fun factor of the game.
Sure in DDO you could deal with the bugs magically knowing when you were gonna cast and doing a 180 around the back of you so that you were staring at air over and over again, but after a while it gets stupid and made the game less engaging for me at least. I stopped paying attention anything around me and to focus on one mob at a time because you never knew when it was going to ninja left or right out of your attack range. You spend so much time focusing on turning your character so that your target is in attack range that you can hardly get spells off. To me that got quite frustrating after a short period of time. I never had to tell the DM that "I check to see if I'm still looking at my target while I'm casting, to make sure I can still see to attack it" while I was playing on paper. I think it's a bit ridiculous in DDO that the mobs act like crack induced A.D.D patients.
I think the "realistic" mob movement has been taken just a bit too far. However that wasn't the killer for me.. I had all sorts of problems getting the game to run smoothly.. lag, being stuck in place, changing keys causing exception errors next time you ran the game, widescreen video not showing proper aspect, etc..
I mean I don't' expect the game to be perfect, bugs are a part of software development.. I just didn't feel the game was worth 15$ a month on top of everything else.
I think the concept is cool to have the problem solving puzzles and specific class abilities like rogues disarming traps and all, so I hope that guildwars adds those features to their game. 15$ for a buggy visual battlenet is too much.
I was kinda suprised by the reviewer, although I respect his views. I don't want to counter his review, but would just like to chime in that I think DDO's pretty cool. I especially like the fact you get experience only for completing missions. In some cases I've heard you get bonus points for _not_ killing anything in the course of achieving your goal. Some may disagree, but I think it's a wonderful change from people going out and randomly bashing monster brains in for the sake of levelling. I actually focus more on the atmosphere and the grouping than I did with WoW. The dungeons are in many cases a lot more interesting than WoW quests. I enjoy the fact that rogues actually have traps to disarm, secret doors to sense, etc. The fact that there are puzzles in the dungeons to solve is also a welcome change.
Let's talk about how sissified these new MMOs are compared to the first worthwhile 3d MMO, i.e. EQ. Specifically, let's talk about how these sissified MMOs are less immersive, less social, and less interesting than the grandfathers of the genre (UO,EQ). I'll be addressing EQ in the context of "classic" EQ, i.e. Kunark, Velious, and maybe Luclin.
We'll start with the death penalty. In EQ, when you die, you've just sacrificed somewhere between 10 minutes and 8 hours of your life. You have run back to your corpse to get back your things, and you have to do it *naked*. Sometimes this can take hours-- especially since the place you pop back up is determined by your "bind point", something that can only be set by casting classes and used in specific places. This, according to modern MMO players, sucks. I beg to differ. This kind of pain creates a real attachment to your character-- and to the people around you. To your character because his losses are yours. Your character loses his life, you lose a non negligible amount of time. To other people, because when you get *really* fucked, you need help from others to get your corpse back. Maybe it's not enjoyable by itself, but wheeling and dealing with a shady Necromancer, trying to get him to summon your corpse to a reasonable location at 3:00 AM is undoubtedly immersive experience.
Transportation as well, is a big thing that I loved in EQ and hated in most other MMOs. The goal of transportation isn't *really* to get you from point A to point B-- it's to give you an idea of how big the in game world really is. To that end. In EQ, a ship ride from one continent to another could take the better part of an hour (much of the travel space was populated by crazy content, too). In WoW, the trips are woefully abbreviated. Step on a ship and... Whoop! You're there.
For many people, the hardships of EQ may seem slightly insane-- but consider that in an easy game like WoW, you're getting something for nothing. Accomplishment without a challenge behind it is meaningless, and the feeling of accomplishment in a world populated by your peers is one of the big draws of MMOs. Hardship was *rampant* in EQ-- and you know what? It did kind of suck. It wasn't always enjoyable. But it made feats of daring all the more impressive and thrilling. The lows were lower, yes-- but the highs were much higher. In the end, WoW got my attention for maybe 5 months, as opposed to the 2 years and countless memories EQ gave me. I *know* WoW is more accessable. That's why so many damn people are playing it. But in my opinion, it isn't more *enjoyable*. The illusion of meaningful accomplishment is to central to the way I play MMOs, and WoW has never been able to make my accomplishments feel non-trivial (and please don't tell me about the PvP. I know it's the biggest draw WoW has, and there's some real potential there, but it's a completely different game when viewed from that angle, and I'm talking about PvE content).
To ward off the Off-Topic police, please note the D&D Online appears to be another of these easy, quick-to-beat, unsatisfying games. Most likely it won't be successful for these reasons.
Realism and fun in games rarely prove compatible.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
It is all in how you play or want to play, not everyone is going to flock to DDO while there are other MMO's that have more content, higher levels etc . . . During the beta I did find DDO close to what I remember from PnP. EQ2 and WoW do have more to offer. But again, it is up to the individual user to decide. Do I want something casual, log on for an hour or two, group and crawl though a dungeon. Or do I want to log on and randomly kill mobs or players and make items, for my one or two hours. --Uther "You were expecting something witty here ?"
"You were expecting something witty here ?"
"There are no plans at this time to make a Macintosh compatible version."
Guess that means I'll stick with WoW. kthxbye.
What if you could run it in Darwine or dual boot your intel mac into Winxp?
Well then it would be a moot point, but as of now you can't... So we won't...
But maybe we will...
That or hope Virtual PC 8 runs at full speed.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I don't think it's possible to create story for thousands of players in the same world at the same times. You can either have hundreds of story writers (I wouldn't call them GM...), but then you have to make sure those stories don't accidentally intersect or players hop randomly from story to story (The NWN way, but not Massive Multiplayer in the typical sense), or you can have few writers that can only create a shallow story, since, let's face it, not everyone is a world saving hero, so having every player partake in one epic story is going to be lame (possibly leaving one player the bragging rights for killing the demon/devil/tanari/shadow/old one/whatever), which gets worse once you start repeating these events (How pathetic is WoW in that respect? How many people were successfull in Molten Core? There is a nice german webcomic about that aspect: http://wow.gamona.de/index.php?seite=pp&pid=126&si d=23 (I don't know when the translation will come out)).
Essentially, I think the RPG Group-of-Heros approach only works well in environments where there is just one group, thus pen & paper, single-player or small groups multiplayer.
I also hate that you can't really explore anywhere. The city unlocks as you play, basically. And each area seems instanced (dungeons, even outside zones). It'd be nice if you could just explore it all at your own risk. At least for me. :)
Ok first there is a Auto attack button that you can click and you automatically swing at your target as long as it is in front of you. Now you can still choose Special attacks with that going. As soon as you change a target then you attack the new target. That way you can do some of the tumbling and shielding that is needed at times. I have been told that Rogues do not have to be hidden to backstab, just flanking or behind someone that is attacking someone else. Hiding does help if you are alone. The grouping does depend on who is in the group and that is true of most if not all MMORPG's. The tanks are in front of the fight with mages and healers in the back. Common sense. The game was made to be a computer version of the Pen and Paper D&D and in most of those all you did was dungeon crawling with some travel between places. You have to understand that this is not a Charge in MMO like many of the others are, it is a bit more real worldly in that it takes time to heal. I actually like both ways and it makes sense for the D&D universe. I agree on the combat music getting tiresome, but it is also a great indicator for when a Slime or Ooze comes out that you may not be able to see clearly. On the Grouping part many times I either had a friend online or found a decent group by just turning on the Looking for Group flag. I usually got a invite pretty quickly and most of the people playing know that grouping is important and are willing to do it. Now you can get some idiots in the groups, but then you simply leave the group. I agree that they need a bit more story telling in the game, hopefully that is on the way. Oh and the Warforged are actually a pretty good race to play, I would call them the "Easy Button" of DDO.
A group of us have managed to maintain professional lives, families and still managed to get together weekly for an evening of table top gaming. When EQ first came out we jumped at a chance to be able to play online from our homes and see a world we were so used to talking about. The gameplay did not really work for us. The grind requirement was, for me at least, what really did it in. Now only one of the group still plays EQ, or any of the many MMO's that we tried over the years. DDO is the latest to taunt us with its promises.
What we are really looking for is a way to have the best of the table top (story telling, thrills of important dice rolls, strange house rules) combined with the best of computer games (computer assisted encounters, 2D and 3D maps, realtime representation of the round on the maps). Ideally this would mean being able to use the computer as a tool during table top game play as well as allowing for one or all to be remote and still able to participate equally.
WotC's Open Gaming License for the d20 world provides the core rules for adding to the world. What if someone added to that with a mapping tool that allowed the DM, from their station, to update the map of what has been explored thus far in 2D. Included in this display are the locations of the players character(s), NPC's, monsters and other inhabitants. Players views of the maps would be limited to that which they had already explored. Next, what if there was a encounter tool built on top of that mapping tool that allowed for the same turn based system from the table top game. Players could use/switch weapons, move, use magic, all of the options from the table top system. The DM would be able to control the monsters and NPC's as well. The encounter software would keep track of initiative, inventory, skills, damage, etc. The maps and the associated encounters could be pre-packaged, DM created or a combination of the two. A basic 3D view of all of the above working itself out would also be appreciated.
I think that about sums up our wish list.Somehow I do not think DDO will be a part of that dream. Anyone know of such a product in the works?
Looks exactly like AC2. And the faces are just as boring and lifeless like they were in AC2.
As far as the clicking for each swingm I've found it's not the best way to play. All you need to do is go into the keymapping screen. Look for the "select nearest foe" and map it something thing sane like tab. Now set yourself to auto-attack. Now all you need to do is make sure you are facing the nearest foe, and are in range. People who master tend to out kill the rest of the party by double the margin.
Personally the thing I don't like is that you often need a rogue for many dungeons. Once you hit 3rd level dungeons some of the trap horrible. If your mage, or cleric gets hit twice by a strength draining posion it's often mission over folks. (A caster with a 0 str can't cast, and etc...) Like wise there is an occassion door that requires a high int to open. You can't always find a blanced party with a pair of fighters, a rouge, a cleric, and a mage.
IANALBIPOOGL (I am not a Lawyer, but I play one on GrokLaw.)
There is an increasingly growing resource site for DDO created by the community (it's a wiki.) It's only a few weeks old, but with over 100 edits per day is already one of the best sites out there for info on this game. Yes, this is my site. Please check it out, or even better, contribute to the site :)
DDOWiki.com
He isnt using any good screenshots. The graphics are very good overall.
So you got modded insightfull? Fine. May I add some insight? ...
I got WoW and installed it. I've never ever played an MMORPG before. It took me aprox. 30 seconds to get going with the game. The people I know that play MMORPGs have been buying GuildWars just to get away from WoW and give other games a chance and yet they come back to WoW.
It's hardware specs aren't insane, a n00b can play it and if I log on after 4 weeks I don't feel like I need another 2 days to get into it again.
Remember StarCraft? It had a max resolution that was allready considered pointless back then. Yet it literally crushed the market and it is still considered one of the best RTS games ever.
Why is that?
Blizzards playtests.
It's that simple.
Playtesting is a core component of development with blizzard. SC was playtested for two years!. How else do you think they could balance 3 factions so well? Something NOBODY has achieved again since then. And the same goes for WoW. A year and more is allways part of their developement. That's the reason WoW rules todays MMORPG scene. They get the medium to higher specs of todays PCs, and develop for those for a few years, allways counting that extra year of playtesting and balancing and tweaking. Thus Blizzard gives you games that A) Are finished. B) Don't suck. C) Run on normal PCs. D) Run stable. (Updates on Blizzard games allmost exclusively cover balacing, rules and game mechanic issues) E) Stay very fun for an allmost indefinite time. Ergo: Blizzard rules.
I recently checked out EQ2 (sucked royally) and talked to a MMORPG fan that has his share of GuildWars and other accounts. His comment went like this: >>WoW is the ticket. It currently doesn't get any better so don't waste your time if your not a fulltime gamer.
Given Blizzards track record I'm inclined to believe that.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I think you miss the reasoning behind solo content. Once player levels are spread out, do you really think you're going to find a full group within 10 minutes at 4:00am?
Having enough solo content means players can log in and play immediately. If I have 30 minutes to kill and decide to play, I don't want to spend 10 of them, let alone more, looking for a group. Without any solo content, I couldn't actually play for just 30 minutes.
I doubt anyone wants a MMOG that 100% of its content can be experienced playing solo. However, having enough solo content means anyone can play, for any amount of time, at anytime of the day.
You might not know the disaster turbine will make of this. They've had good people -- and good streches -- in their games, but it has been rare.
... flawed. Depending on how your character name hashed, you would either be mostly-as-intended (in the middle), or Wi (you get 10x of the aggro you should), or myself (you get 1/10th of the aggro you should).
If you think some of their DDO decisions are laughable, you should have seen some of the AC ones. Spells researched by dumping components into a bar and hitting a button. Eventually it turned out that your spell components were just the result of a formula applied to a hash of your account name (not character name even). Programs popped up to bot it for you (thank god it was awfully boring). Thus was the start of the great Macro-on's Call. A problem they never really banned anyone for but that caused serious problems in the game, especially for PvP as the "level cap" without macroing was effectivly unreachable (and almost unreachable with macroing).
Then there was the "spell economy." You see, magic is "depleted" by being cast. Both in a school (critter, life, item, and war) and per-spell/per-spell-level. So a spell that should have given you +35 to a stat (for example, focus self 6) would actually only give you +30 to a stat, because so many people were casing it (namely everyone in existance who had critter magic and could eek out a 6th level spell -- highest there was in AC at the time). Meanwhile, other spells like crossbow mastery self 6 were providing a +40 bonus since next to nobody used xbow. Kinda cute, but when you combine it with the Flavor Of The Month problems MMOs face it started sucking. Especially with reguard to mages -- you spent a lot of points buying all those magic schools, and someone else without them but with arcane lore could use jewlery that would always provide that +35 bonus (item cast buffs were not part of the spell economy). There was in theory some indicator bar for the spell economy but it never actually indicated anything as far as I could tell. Needless to say the system was nixed after (too long) a time.
And let's not forget the most brilliant decision ever: allow monsters to gain XP off killing players. Also, provide monsters with a flat 10xp/pt curve to improve their stats, as opposed to the exponential curve players faced. Have the Virindi Executor resist your first 2 war spells? May as well run away, he just gained ~500-1000 xp, and dumped all 50-100 points that provides into his magic resistance skill. Needless to say your war magic skill of 250 to 300 won't be landing anymore.
Last but not least, no discussion of turbine is complete without mentioning the "Wi Flag". See, the way they calculated monster aggro (initial (and often final target) not based on damage or healing or anything -- purely random amoung targets in range! Fight till one of you dead or target out of range. Run back to spawn. Acquire new target.) was
Now, this Wi or anti-Wi flag was kinda interesting tactically. You could send my toons with it into situations nobody could normally go, because most mobs would ignore me. It could be annoying though; my friend (who had a Wi) zones in to the dungon I'm fighting in and suddenly the 15 bugs surrounding me (Olthoi -- the one cool thing about the game) are off in another corner. Even the one I was fighting turns around and tries (and fails due to the "I run at your location" pathing AC has) to run at him, dragging me behind it across the dungon.
But overall it was just irratating. People who were wi-flagged often couldn't do quests; they'd just die due to concentrated fire at the start of a spawn. It lasted, what, 2 years before one of their good (last good? I think she moved on) programmers found it. Despite them telling us "we've tested it there is no wi flag" the whole time.
So yeah, go Turbine. Not a company I plan to play a game from again.
Probably get karma-dinged by a D&D fanboi for bashing the developer of The Best Game Ever or something, but that's okay I've done my time (in AC and playing D&D -- gestalt at the moment thanks for asking) and said my peace.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
I love DDO, In context of the poster, I'm neither a casual gamer or a "hard-core" gamer. I do not agree that this game is not for the casual gamer however simply because you cant solo. I particularly enjoy that everyone can hear me speak in the group and anyone else who has a mic (USB hopefully). The dynamics of the game are set so that anyone can find a group or create on in under a very short time. I don't think I can go back to any other MMO that is of the type 'go kill stuff be happy'. I love that there are dungeons and a set number and that you learn to master them. I love that most of the dungeons are obstical course based and not kill everything based. I definatly get the impressino Turbine is focusing on Quality and not Quantity which is despreatly needed in the gaming industry.
If you have not tried the game but know someone who has, ask them for there 10day free trial which comes with every game.
I have purchased the game, and am enjoying playing it as a casual gamer. There appears to be a lot of mis-information about this game in many of the comments I have read. While the game does have an auto-attack feature, manually-clicking is faster than auto-attack. Some people consider this game a "click-fest", however this is very much not the case. Seriously, has anyone actually played this game past the first couple missions, or are we just spewing anti-new-mmo-non-wow banter? There are traps in this game that would make Indiana Jones quiver. Blades out of the walls, crushing ceilings, flooded areas, spikes from the floor, acid and fire from the walls.. in very clever places. You can really see how intricately designed the dungeons are, rest locations are spaced nicely and it really requires a lot of teamwork to complete some of the harder missions. The game has built in VOIP support, and finding a party will take no longer than 2-3 minutes at the most. I absolutely love the dungeon crawl feeling in this game, carefully scouting out territory when the rogue yells out "TRAP!" everyone stops and your gut churns while you wonder if you're standing in the trap already.. It really is a D&D Game, and it really does stay true to the rules. In order to make the modern PC conversion, a real-time combat system was introduced. This really works well, however for traditional PnP types, this may be a little bit more action than they had asked for, but for those of us used to PnP and playing FPS games, this really is a great mix. Before you discount this game as just more "carp", take a look at it yourself, play past level 3 and see what you think. Once you experience the traps for the first time with another player, you'll see exactly what I mean by teamwork. This game has no grind. Just play mission after mission, and have fun with it.
Perhaps this game will filter out the less diehard players and leave only the more serious gamers?
It's hard for me to imagine the mindset that sees this as a good thing. "Less people will like the game! Yippee! We'll make less money!"
Realism is not the goal of a game (especially a fantasy game!). The goal is fun. Anyway, the entire point of an RPG is that the fighting skills belong to the character, not the player. What you're looking for is an MMOFPS, like Planetside. Those are cool in their own way, but that's never been what D&D has been about.
Try the SCA maybe? Better realism than any possible computer game, all the skill is yours, should be just your speed.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Will it be any easier to port games to the new x86 Macs?
If it is, then more game companies will be porting to a Unix-ish system on x86 hardware...
Which could mean more Linux ports, too.
I'm going to put on my nerd hat, just like everyone else here.
/nerd
Kobolds are by no definition stupid. They possess an intelligence rating (from the archetype in the Monster Manual) of 10, which is decidedly average.
This is just supposition now, the puny thing with 4 hit points isn't going to just stand there and let you hit it even if it only has two brain cells to rub together.
I recently purchased DDO and share some of the authors opinion on the final product. I do have a fews problems with some of what is written though.
"It's a fact that the race most often played in a MMOG is 'human', and the unliving nature of the Warforged may make them an unpopular race."
Or it might have something to do with the fact that warforged are considered constructs and thus only healed for half the amount by clerical spells (unless they have a specific feat) and must be healed with a different set of spells (that most wizards don't bother with as they want to do damage). Such mechanics make the warforged a bit of a liability for some groups. I don't think thier humanity plays much of a role to informed players.
"Instead of hitting fight and using abilities as they become available, or simply watching as your avatar filets a bunny, DDO is a click-fest worthy of either Diablo game."
This is somewhat misleading. While you *can* play click style, there is an auto-combat option as with nearly every other MMORPG. It is dissimilair to some in that most monsters don't much care for dying and so you have to make sure you stay within swinging distance.
"D&D monsters aren't like the villains of Diablo; They jump around, move out of range, and generally do their best not to get killed. That means that in addition to repeatedly clicking on your opponent you're going to be trying to follow their movements. It's all too dang chaotic to be truly fun."
My group doesn't really run into these problems that much. Since the game includes collision detection, mobs can not just run through players. Thus if you pack fighters into a doorway with sheilds up, you don't have to worry about the mob running through. On the same note, if you surround a mob with well placed players, they have a very hard time getting away, something which I found woefully missing in most MMORPGs and was quite happy to see appear in DDO.
"If they don't, they can strike from hiding and possible score a sneak attack for massive damage. Rogues can even do sneak attacks in combat by using the Bluff skill to throw an opponent off balance."
Technically rogues get thier sneak attack damage any time the mob is not currently attacking them. This is one of the changes which I found somewhat hard to aggree with, sadly without flanking, it was the only option.
"A group comfortable with each other, with voice chat in use, will have a good deal of success. Pick-up groups, though, are at even more of a disadvantage than in most games simply because things happen so fast."
A good solid 80% of the pick-up groups I get in have all players with voice chat enable and normally 75% or more of the players use it (you have to enable it to be able to hear other people talk, but you do not have to have a microphone to enable). With voice, I hardly think that pickup groups are really at that much of a disadvantage if the players have some familairity with thier characters and someone disides to fill the leadership role. If they don't, then I doubt they would be doing well in any game.
"Rest shrines are usually nearby these areas, allowing characters to regain hit points and mana mid-dungeon. Besides these rest shrines, the only way to heal HP in-dungeon is with a potion or clerical spell. I hate hate hate almost everything about these design decisions."
Just a small clarification here, you can only use rest or rez shrines once per crawl, per shrine (some levels have multiple shrines). I can almost agree that the lack of regeneration is a pain, however I end up being swayed by the fact that it adds quite a bit of challenge and strategy to the game. In my mind it is similair to games like Resident Evil that go stingy on the ammunition to force you to think about every bullet shot. I can easily see how thie would be a point of contention though. Not to mention it's pretty hard to translate 8 hours of rest in PnP to an MMORPG.
Well thats about it. I just figured I'd chime in and toss my two pence about, though I doubt anyone wants to hear em'.
It cracked me up to see this post. It looks eerily like something I'd write myself.
"Put your message in a modem, and throw it into the cyber-sea." - Rush
The author sounds like he's basically pissed off that DDO isn't WoW.
Where I feel the problem lies is this: The game seems to ignore CHARACTER dexterity in combat, and instead relies more on PLAYER dexterity. There is a difference. I am not in the peak of health (as my character is supposed to be) nor am I trained in combat (as my Fighter is supposed to be). I am also constrained by a very artificial interface (KBD/mouse/monitor) instead of being actually in the room. The role-playing implies that I am NOT my character and he is not me, but that the character is a separate role that I am playing, and should be as little restricted by my abilities as possible. Maybe it's just me, but RPGs just shouldn't be action/FPS (first person spellcasting) clones. It seems to me that the game mechanics and your character's skills should matter more than your manual dexterity.
...pretty much sucks. I think it has to do with trying to conform to rules built to simplify and decentralize battles and DM Maintenance when those goals are not at all interesting or useful on a PC based platform.
I've never played a good game from TSR, but I played them--pool of radiance, etc... the combat was always yucky and the depth of the character, compared to those of other RPGs (Say M&M or Bards Tale), was pretty minimal.
The feel was generally pretty poor too, but I assume that has to do with their contractors more than the fact that it was created from the company that owned D&D.
What's your take on Planet Shift?
"It's hard for me to imagine the mindset that sees this as a good thing. "Less people will like the game! Yippee! We'll make less money!"
:)
I don't think every gaming programmer is out there for the bottom line. I'd venture to say there are a lot of them plying their trade for the love of it (which of course can be abit idealistic).
"Realism is not the goal of a game (especially a fantasy game!). The goal is fun..."
I basically agree with you here. However, I think you'd hear the word "realism" used by the designers when describing the mobs AI and gameplay. Why else would they make a mob that moves away/around when you attack it? The way I see it, they're trying to inject a little realism into the (fantasy) experience.
"Anyway, the entire point of an RPG is that the fighting skills belong to the character, not the player. What you're looking for is an MMOFPS, like Planetside. Those are cool in their own way, but that's never been what D&D has been about."
Perhaps this is how they're trying to get their game to stand out from the rest of the pack? The review sort of reinforced that this game seems to be (in some respects) in between the types of MMOs we're used to. After having played MMOs for many years, I kind of see this as a breath of fresh air (but fully acknowledge that the jury's out on whether this style of MMO will be financially sound in the long run). Hopefully it does well enough to either inspire or build other similarly engineered that are able to appease the player-skilled crowd *and* the character-skilled crowd. It's a difficult balance but with time maybe it can be done?
And as for SCA, I like the idea of it, but it's not my bag...
Two fish swim into a wall, one turns to the other and says, "Dam".
This review makes the repeated assumption that "casual" players are those who want to play alone, and that the alternative to this is "hardcore" players who grind content and look for the end-game.
The assumption colors the review, particularly the conclusion, where the reader is urged to ignore DDO because 'hardcore' people will be bored and 'casual' people will be stuck.
I think this assumption is a huge mistake. Time-in-game and group-willingness are separate axes, not polar opposites on a single scale.
There are people with lots of time, but who prefer to solo in MMOs. IMO these will be unhappy in DDO; they can't solo, and after grinding fast in groups they don't like they'll be bored.
There are people with lots of time who prefer to group. They may or may not be happy. Some who are accustomed to the 'grind' strategy will be bored; after zooming to the end they will find nothing. Others may decide to try every possible adventure; they may not be bored. As the review noted, Turbine appears to be offering new content at a refreshing pace.
People who have little time and prefer to solo will be particularly frustrated. Although not every adventure requires a huge time committment, DDO does require grouping, and nobody can guarantee an instant party.
People with little to moderate time who prefer to group will be very very happy with DDO if they like its style. They won't feel shafted as in games where the top-end is the 'real' game and those who don't grind are left behind, and they'll be assured that their fellow players know how to work as a team, because nobody will have gotten to level X by soloing.
It might surprise you to hear this, but there are one or two G5-based Macs floating around out there.
I would try it if they gave a free 30-day trial like WoW did. Thats how I got hooked on WoW.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Don't get me wrong, I don't object to the idea of a fantasy MMO "FPS". Heck, I enjoyed Planetside for a while. It just shouldn't be called "D&D Online" - interesting idea, wrong franchise.
I've been playing P&P RPGs for 25 years (and most of my group for longer than that - my GM learned D&D from a guy who learned it from one of Gygax's group, very early on), and had hopes that DDO would make some attempt, however feeble, to capture that experience. Story driven, not click driven. One day I'll write my own, but you'll never see it, because it won't be a franchise like D&D. It's a shame to see the power of the franchise wasted.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It feels like most of the negative reviews of DDO I have seen thus far on the net are from people in two groups:
1. Those who dislike MMOs, but love PnP D&D, and are upset that DDO does not have a human gamemaster who can generate infinite variety and choice of path.
2. Those who are in love with a current MMO, and are upset that DDO is not "EQ with D&D terms" or "WoW with D&D setting".
What has the g/f and I (and several of our friends) sucked into DDO is that it addresses so many of the things we did _not_ like about other MMOs. Boring combat? Gone. Lack of strategy? Gone. Easy mode? Gone. Time sinks? Gone. Downtime? Gone. Rogues as uber-warriors instead of thieves? Gone. Static play environment where nothing changes? Gone. Dungeon as "scenery" that is 99.9% noninteractive? Gone. Dungeon as "place to stick 1000 monsters to slog through"? Gone.
This review, in particular, seems to come from someone who not only has not played the game much, but also has not read the manual or explored the interface. Truthfully, it sounds like someone who has read all of the complaints on various discussion forums, and is summarizing them, without ever having played the game itself.
The review complains of the "inhumanity" of the Warforged. I think that was the point. They are very inhuman and little distinction is drawn between male and female. This was enough to turn my g/f off of playing one, in fact -- but that's okay! The Warforged are different! Here we have a character who can come built-in with his own armor and other benefits from day one, but suffers the inability to actually wear "real" armor that others wear. It is interesting and different. That's a good thing.
The review complains (repeatedly) about the click-fest that is combat. (Tell that to the millions of people happily and madly clicking on Diablo for the past 10 years.) The click-fest is _optional_. The very first icon on your default toolbar is auto-attack. Don't want to click? Click once.
Single-click combat is actually useful in DDO, because the game allows (forces?) you, the player, to take an active role in combat. Your character does not block. You do. Your character does not tumble or evade. You do. If you don't, neither does he. Single-click combat allows you to more precisely time your swings between your opponent's swings and spend more time blocking or evading his attacks.
If you're playing the game by running straight up to an enemy and right-clicking on him til he dies, you're going about it all wrong and will enjoy less combat success than someone who advances carefully, choses a defensible position, blocks, tumbles, tries to set ambushes, etc.
The article states incorrectly that a natural 20 is a critical hit. It is not. A natural 20 is an automatic hit and nothing more. Each weapon has a critical hit range, which can be 20 only, 19-20, 18-20, etc. If you roll in that range on the die, the computer makes a *second* die roll. If the second roll hits, you score a critical. If the second roll misses, you score a normal hit.
"It is all too dang chaotic to be truly fun." The chaos is the *reason* it is fun. DDO captures the feel of real combat in a way no other MMO has. Monsters can not walk through each other. They can't stand on each other to attack you. They can't walk through you, either. Want to have the fighter block a doorway with his body while the mage stands behind him (in safety) and fires spells over his shoulder? It actually _works_.
The monsters are intelligent. Rogue-ish monsters will hide, sneak around the back of the battle, and try to sneak attack vulnerable characters... but you CAN see or hear them coming, if you're paying attention, and intercept them (or light them on fire, my favorite).
The game rewards planning and coordination.
The environment is truly dynamic! Because everything is instanced, the game can really respond to events. Traps are common, varied, and devilish. Monsters
All you have to hope is that the MMORPG makes it's way over to Nintendo revolution, where the D20 attatchment can sit right between your Proton-Gun/Ghost Trap and Golf-stick(mind the windows).
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
Sounds more realistic to me. Perhaps this game will filter out the less diehard players and leave only the more serious gamers? I wonder if the MMO player-base has grown enough to sustain a game like this where it requires more skill and dedication (as in you'd have to be pretty dedicated to play this game if it's as boring as you've said it is)? Actually, I'd like to think it has, and additionally, I'd like to think that this game wouldn't change much to accomodate the people who want a fantasy MMO where you don't have to be particularly good, you just have to know when to hit the attack key...
What?!?
Skill and Dedication! Let us not forget that games are suposed to be fun. People simply will not market a subscription game with a monthly fee to only the hardest of hardcore gamers on the scale that DDO is going to be marketed.
Consider this - just because it takes skill does not mean it's fun. Just as in the real world there are many things that take skills of some sort that are not fun, this also applies in games. For example:
Fun for programmers:
Writing a cool new algorithm that is useful to many people, coding game engines, etc.
NOT fun for programmers:
Entering data into a spreadsheet because the PHB dosen't understand Excel
Fun for mechanics:
Building a performance car.
Not fun for mechanics:
Rebuilding a "performance" Ford Aveo
Fun for gamers:
Playing a quality game that meets all expectations in terms of graphics, gameplay and so forth
NOT fun for gamers - playing a game that has made arguably made the controls obtuse on the altar of "hardcore" gaming
Don't get me wrong - a game requiring skills is great, but most MMORPGers don't seem to be online to have a dexterity contest, neat as the idea might be. Implying that "this is as it should be" in D&D online is like a tabletop GM stating that "you rolled an 18 - you will do major damage to the barbarian cheif, but only if you can throw this egg through that bucket 50 yards away over there ". Strategy should improve damage, dexterity just isn't what people are looking for in these games. Nor should they be.
I've heard that DDO has been getting less than favorable reviews, but this is the first review that I've read.
Firstly, it seems that the developers have been as faithful as they could to D&D. This is not a Good Thing(tm). D&D has several flaws (some horrible) which seem to have been magnified by the conversion from books to bits. Even a well designed RPG cannot be ported without some concession to radically different play environment.
Now that there is DDO, everyone that has played regular D&D can make an apples-to-apples comparison about how online and tabletop games differ in design and gameplay.
I personally won't play any MMOG until one is developed which is capable of instantiating a living society, with an economy driven by the entire population (where 90% or more of the inhabitants are NPCs controlled by advanced AI). The Sims is the closest thing to this as far as I can tell, but there everyone is essentially an NPC. A fantasy setting plus Sims gameplay plus MASSIVE (the software written to control the digital extras in LOTR) is what I want to see, but this is at least five years out.
The problem with missing isn't that it won't happen, but that it happens in a twitch game for reasons out of your control. My problem with D&D has always been that it is too abstract for a role-playing game (and a lot of its rules don't make sense either as rules or in terms of what they represent in the world).
If you're playing a twitch game then you should miss because you aimed badly or mistimed your attack (this is why you miss in Quake).
The idea of interpreting "intimidate" and "diplomacy" as being taunt and detaunt skills is hilarious. What it really points to is that they don't implement physics or combat well enough to prevent monsters from murdering squishies using realistic tactics (if you want to kill him you'll have to go through ME.)
I like to play MMO game as well as Table top games (i.e. GURPS). But more to the point when I play a MMO game I usually don't have a string of two hours to spend playing all in one sitting.
Between taking care of the laundry and cooking dinner, and periodic breaks to take care of the honey dews at home I have a hard time with most games that force grouping to advance or play. I do on occasion find that I can get a block of hours to play maybe once every two weeks or so, but for games where the number of hours spend playing really equates to what you get out of the game I cannot dedicate the time to a game like this.
Now I am playing Guild Wars which is very well suited for my play style, if I need to party with a group there are NPC's to flesh out your group. Or if I have the time I can usually get into an adventuring group fairly quickly. And most missions take less than 30 minutes so I don't have to keep half my day clear to get somewhere in the game.
... Has been roleplaying for about 5 years.
;)
Sorry, it was to easy to let pass.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Okay, so my major problem with MMORPGs isn't with the clickity-click of combat. Heck, it's not even with the thin verneer of "role playing" that floods the chat channels.
It's that there's almost nothing else.
All the wacky skills that don't have to do with combat, healing, or trap discovery? Pretty much gone.
What about the weird ones like Jump and Climb that let you really motor around the terrain in bizarre ways? How about Forgery or Disguise, for getting past those pesky guards? What about a Balance check for stealing across a tightrope held precariously across the chasm by the sharp steel of my grappling hook as part of the intricate plan I worked on for three months to steal the royalty's jewels right out from under their noses?
D&D, the archetypal tabletop role playing game, has its roots in being *imaginative*, and one expression of that lays in finding creative ways through situations. When playing with humans, this is not a problem; humans can improvise, so the DM can make a judgement call on whether some creative action is plausable or not.
Computers, however, excel at running scripts and never deviating from them. I can't be creative in a MMORPG unless I can change the script. The only one I've heard of that really encourages that sort of on-the-fly redefinition is Second Life, but here's the other thing: I can't change the script intuitively, like, on a whim. Instead, I have to learn the freaking scripting language.
Not being Neo, I'm stuck in the role playing world as programmed. And that blows. I fight, or I select from a few pre-programmed conversation trees, or I get nowhere.
Like WOPR, I've decided the only way to win is to not play the game.
> All of the D&D iconic classes are available (even poncy bards),
:-)
You see, that's why I like Final Fantasy, where the bards are always spoony!
Chris Mattern
Everyone keeps talking about what they would like out of an MMO. The bottom line is that Turbine is a business. Blizzard is a business. And we are predictable animals.
So what is WoW?
It's a simple psychological mechanism designed to get you to constantly re-use it. It's called operant conditioning using positive reinforcement. You take simple actions, you get a reward. You take the action again.
You press the button, you kill 10 whatevers or collect 10 thingamajigs, and you get experience and an item. You eventually get a little more powerful, and you go kill enemies that are proportionately more powerful as well. Sometimes they don't even look different, they're just called wolves instead of starving wolves!
Blizzard has used positive reinforcement delivered on a semi-fixed ratio schedule to condition 6 million people to pay them $15 dollars a month. Their ratio for reinforcement appears to be the most optimal of the current crop of MMO's, judging by their number of subscribers.
I applaud Blizzard, really. I've given them some of my money and time, so I'm just as much a dupe as anybody else. The scheme is brilliant:
Pay $15.
Press the button.
Get the reward.
Repeat.
When this hook nabs you millions of subscribers and jillions of dollars, why would you make a game that actually appeals to more traditional, table top role playing fans?
Gamer Population = Farm Status
I had never played a MMOG before DDO came out, but have played many tabletop D&D sessions along with some computer rpgs (FFVII, Neverwinter Night , nethack). Both my husband and I were super excited about DDO and bought it the day it came out (we didn't play during the preview period). After a weekend of playing, it is difficult to describe our disappointment with this game.
;)
As the article said, the developers made some hideous design decisions; Having to wait around in a laggy tavern for a full minute or two as my character healed being one of the most annoying. Although the graphics were lovely, the actual game didn't feel interesting.
One of the most important aspects of an rpg (IMHO) is building your character's skills and equipment. It was an odd decision then to give your DDO character a reasonable weapon at the very start of the game. I usually like being able to say "Oh, if only I could afford this 1 gp long bow!" But no, the game gives you one right away so you don't have to work for it. Secondly, the ranks and level increases seemed very far between even for a starting character. Killing monsters in dungeons just for the heck of it isn't so fun to me. I want to be working for something.
In fact, the entire game just isn't fun. To mangle a quote, "I can't define fun, but I know it when I see it." And DD0 doesn't have any of it.
Another problem I had was picking a (not min/maxed) rogue for my first character. I ran through all the training quests and at this point the game still looked pretty awesome. I was quickly killed in the first real dungeon after using up all my healing potions (not surprising since I'm a pretty casual gamer) which shouldn't have been too much of a problem. However, there is essentially no way to get more healing potions until after you have finished the introductory quests and you _have_ to do the first quest solo. It took me about 10 more tries to get through the first dungeon as a rogue. I probably couldn't have finished it if I hadn't looked on the forums and gotten some tips. By this time, my husband' fighter had finished the next three quests and had gotten out of the intro area. I'm all for games being challenging, but shouldn't the intro areas let you get your bearings a bit? It was like no one had play tested a rogue (or as others in the forums complained, a wizard).
After playing through a few more quests, I decided to make a new character in a different race/class. Unfortunately, you _have_ to run through the exact same 5 intro quests with no changes every time you start a new character before you are allowed out in the "real world". This seems awfully tedious and strongly cuts down the replay value.
Several times over the next week, my husband and I would say, "Well, maybe it is a good game. Let's try it again." So we would play for another couple of hours before giving up in disgust. I could keep complaining, but upon hearing my description of DDO last week someone introduced me to this other MMOG called World of Warcraft...
That's what the sleep spell is for.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If it requires player dexterity, it's not an RPG. In an RPG, success and failure are functions of the character.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Here's why you need solo content.
I have five friends that I game with all the time. We've been friends for years and have played every popular MMORPG. Unfortunately we're all in different timezones. All times that follow are in my local time.
John is a college student, and can play from 11:00AM to 2:00PM. He refuses to wake up earlier than that, as he has afternoon classes. He gets home around 9:00PM and doesn't go to bed until 3:00AM.
Jake is a freshman in high school. Other than the occasional burst of immaturity, he's ok. He gets home at 3:00PM and his parents force him to go to bed at midnight.
I have a full time job and get home at 6:00PM. I can stay up until midnight without losing any sleep.
Sue is Jake's mom and a housewife. She gets the kids ready for school in the morning at 8:00AM, but after that, she has nothing better to do all day (unless she's running errands) until 3:00PM when Jake gets home and then plays online with Jake. She usually stays on about an hour later than Jake does (1:00AM).
Samuel lives in England and works late at night, but comes home around 8:00PM and usually stays on until midnight unless he falls asleep.
Don is also in high school, but lives 3 timezones away and comes home at 6:00PM and can usually stay on until 2:00AM.
Now, because I'm sure this is all confusing, I've drawn a little graph to help you understand.
Please ignore additional characters. The [iii] is the allotted timespan.
Now, as you can see, we all have different work/school schedules and times that we can play. We can usually all play from 9-12, but there are many times when one or two of us can't play with everyone else. A MMORPG that forces us to all group together means that we can only play the game for a few hours at a time, and if for some reason (like life) we can't play the entire 3 hours, that's even less time that we can enjoy the game.
Now do you understand?
Nope.
WOW and other MMORPG's are user designed experiences that have evolved to appeal to a large group of people.
Think about it :
Mods : player contributed
Teamspeak : player contributed
Guild chat : player contributed
Parties : player contributed
Guild websites : player contributed
Forums : player contributed
These are the things that I have come to most focus on in the over all experience in WOW, I think many, many players are exactly the same.
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
you might want to talk to this guy...
http://infernix.net/wowban/
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
my indigo is only running irix 6.0 and doesn't have a cd drive. sniff...
Welcome to the world of The Elder Scrolls... Oblivion comes out in a week.
The only way to level your character is to use your skills or go to a trainer and pay for lessons. Want to get better at picking locks? Pick some locks...
It's about getting the girls!
If there are any girls, I want to do them.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I used to think the same way.
The team play, guilds, etc. were the features what used to appeal to me most about the game. But every day I watch my roomates come home from work and get online until they go to bed. And every Saturday/Sunday morning I watch them get up and get online for most of the day.
They're in a guild. They post on the guild forums. They run the high end instances in large groups. But what do they spend most of their time doing? Farming. Farming for rep. Farming for some "blueblossommithrilsilk" that they need to transmute to "essenceofitem#27" to sell for virtual currency. They're farming for recipes. Farming for that last piece to their tier two epic armor set #24, with bonuses to stats 2 and 3.
Despite the accoutrements that accompany the grind, they're still just in the grind. They're pressing the button and getting the reinforcement with all of their spare time. Everything else is just fluff. And that fluff is required for people to believe that what they're doing is really anything other than participating in reinforcement zone #36 for the 42nd time so that Mage #3 can get finally get reward, I mean chest piece, #7.
That's where the phrase "farm status" comes from. A guild runs MC over and over again without it ever being a challenge. Without it ever failing. All so that additional guild members can fill out their inventories (The reward for pressing the button for 3 hours as the de-curse bot, or the heal bot, or whatever).
First
" if you didn't play daily you lost out on way too much and it was hard to either catch up with friends or find a new group."
then
"DDO is just fine to pick up once a week, easy to use, quick to group,"
first, your frieds can still have out leveled past you in DDO. Thats an issue with how much you play, or not ahve charaters just for when you are all on together.
I have never spent more the 15 minutes looking for a group on WoW.
as much as I hate character cock waving, I feel this is relevent. I have a 60 level character, 47 level character and others of lower levels. Just pointing out that I ahve relevent experience.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
When I heard about this I sort of had assumed it'd be text based I was kinda suprised to see pictures in this article and learn this. Pictures are limitations. The ccool thing about D and D for me was that it is a lot more open to the imagination.
I agree with your definition.
However, I leave open the definition of "functions of the character".
How does one manifest/materialize the statistic/function of dex? If a mob's hopping all around trying to make you miss, and your dex is too low to keep up, what's preventing the game designers from incorporating your character's lack of dexterity into its ability to track and whack a mob? To me, it's still well within the functions and definitions of the character. They've just chosen to extend how it works.
If that disqualifies it from your definition of an RPG, fair enough, but to me it's still well within the RPG definition. (EQ did stuff like this with runspeed abilities you could tweak at high levels that would allow you to run away from or chase down mobs (without having a runspeed modifying spell cast on you) that normally you wouldn't be fast enough for. I'm not sure if you consider EQ to be within the RPG genre, but seems like a decent example to me.)
I think that if they were to stick with the standard way of creating an MMO, they'd have to lean too heavily upon their brand name to stand out. They're trying to be different -- for better or worse. The market will decide. (and I'm really curious to see how it reacts...)
Two fish swim into a wall, one turns to the other and says, "Dam".
I have to agree pretty much entirely with this article. I've been playing D&D for years. I've constructed multiple gaming worlds, some of which are alive and bustling with other people having taken over the running of games in them. I played in Eberron from the onset and I like it. I playtested DDO for these reasons and I thik they thought my experience with D&D and other RPG's was a good thing. And that's why I didn't like it. I like roleplaying. I like it a lot. But what I like about it is the roleplaying, not the hitting an ogre with my sword. I want to care about the other characters, the NPC's, the world, and I want to have an impact and this game lacks that entirely. Also, there's nothing to do but dungeon crawl and I hate dungeon crawls. Bummer. Overall, while this is the single best looking MMORPG ever and I really wish that I loved it, I was so bored I stopped the playtesting a few weeks in and went back to WoW. Dissapointing, because I was really into this game from the word go on all the boards and what not. I was relly excited. It seems ot me that every time somehting somes out with teh D&D name on it that isn't an RPG, I get very excited and hopeful and then it blows. Oh well.
"Good, I say. This is keeping in line with pen-and-paper D&D, the idea that there is offscreen training and what-not involved in actually "levelling up" "
While I have no problem with this, the idea that you can't learn and utilize new things while on an adventure is silly.
Back when I fenced in tournments, (a long time ago kids) I new move occured to me during a match which I utilized during that same match, and it worked very well. Point in fact I beat every opponent.
I would say you can 'level up' during an adventure.
How many times have you been working on something difficult, and then suddenlty get it whil doing the work? once again 'leveling up' while doing something. Not going back to some training center to ponder deeply upon all the things you experienced only then to 'get it'
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We have enough of those games. How about a developer step up and create something thats actually worth getting into. A persistent and huge world so that the players can truly shape and play in it. Its not a roleplaying game if the roleplaying does nothing to further the game. D&D is the poster child for what people think of when they think of roleplaying games. Its the ambassador to the masses and they just urinated all over it.
There are other ways to play the game, however. 5-man instance-running isn't so bad. It can be fun and even net you some rewards, though not the uber gear. Good tactics in PvE and PvP can pay off, though sadly much of the game design of WoW puts the game experience "on rails" so that farming becomes, as you say, the paradigm.
It's not a very hard game, but kinda nifty in its way. You can seek the challenge instead of the gear. I do and its pretty fun.
Are Mac users born stupid, or do they just become stupid after buying Macs?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_on_Investment
Why not just play Neverwinter Nights? It's really fun, and lots of modules can use the D and D rules with up to 96 players, I believe.
http://nwn.bioware.com/
A week or two ago I was watching the Colbert Report (a spin-off of the Daily Show), and was highly amused by a little fireside chat by Colbert about the release of Dungeons & Dragons Online. Here's a transcript (and video):
Earlier this week marked the introduction of Dungeons and Dragons: Storm Reach a new on-line version of the popular swords and sorcery game. I myself played a lot of the D and D way back when. Actually I once met Len Lakofka at Gen Con Ten.
[pause] Anybody?
[applause]
I'll never forget when I lost *Faraneeth, my level 21 Lawful Good Paladin. Heh. I know, that's redundant. He was on a campaign searching for Tenser, wizard of the Circle of Light, on rout from the *Shel-du-mar valley to the *Filronian Peninsula. He got cornered by a Displacer Beast and a Mind Flayer and he failed to save against Psionic attack. See, he'd already lost a lot of hit points battling a Beholder and the cleric in the party couldn't regenerate enough hit points with his Heal Light Wounds spell. All in all a sad day in *Badabascore.
But I gave up D&D in 1984. My parents were concerned I was being possessed by demons. So one summer they sent me to an exorcism day camp. Eight weeks of sailing, casting out the devils within me and making lanyards did the trick. Oh, and I got a girlfriend.
Anyway, it is the end of an era. And as the cyber-elves and the e-wizards log onto the digital dungeon, I sadly place on my shelf these now obsolete polyhedral dice. The good news is with D&D now on the inter net, the social outcasts of today's junior high schools are relieved of the agony of any human contact.
Enjoy your magnificent isolation.
Don't forget to bathe.
There's definitely a good bit of that which had to have been written by somebody pretty familiar with D&D. I was pleased to find that Colbert himself actually played for a few years back in high school, as mentioned in this Onion AV Club interview:
AVC: You were into Dungeons & Dragons as a kid, were you not?
SC: Yeah, I really was. I started playing in seventh grade, 1977. And I played incessantly, 'til probably 1981--four years.
AVC: What's the appeal?
SC: It's a fantasy role-playing game. If you're familiar with the works of Tolkien or Stephen R. Donaldson or Poul Anderson or any of the guys who wrote really good fantasy stuff, those worlds stood up. It's an opportunity to assume a persona. Who really wants to be themselves when they're teenagers? And you get to be heroic and have adventures. And it's an incredibly fun game. They have arcane rules and complex societies and they're open-ended and limitless, kind of like life. For somebody who eventually became an actor, it was interesting to have done that for so many years, because acting is role-playing. You assume a character, and you have to stay in them over years, and you create histories, and you apply your powers. It's good improvisation with agreed rules before you go in.
On a tangential note, Colbert is the only person/source I can think of that successfully managed to predict 5/5 Oscar winners. Heck, he even got Crash.
If it depends on my ability to click accurately and quickly, then the character's abilities may be a limit on my ability, but my ability is also limiting the character, and that's not coherent for an RPG. It's not my job to have combat reflexes.
If the game won't let me (actually fairly clumsy, I have to say) play a graceful, agile, rogue, then it's not D&D.
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You are correct. Things aren't as black and white as my original post. There are entertaining portions of the game, such as PVP and other challenges. Even the large farming instances look like they're probably fun when you're first figuring out how to finish them (I never went that far into the game myself, so I don't know for sure).
/played, they'd get a value in excess of one month (Maybe 2 months for some of them) in total play time. That's at least 30 full-24-hour days spent in game. Most video games have a play time measured in hours.
I was speaking more to the heart of the game itself. Lots of other video games pose challenges and include fun aspects. But there is a reason that when you type "/played" in WoW, it spits back a time that is measured in minutes, hours and DAYS.
If I asked one of the people I know who play WoW to type
There has to be some reason that MMOs have such huge numbers of paying subscribers who dedicate so much time to the game other than a repeatable challenge or player-vs-player combat. Other video games have repeatable challenges and player-vs-player combat and many of the other same features. But no other type of game has so successfully implemented the psychological concept of operant conditioning with such a well designed schedule of reinforcement.
If I am correct, and that is the primary mechanism for WoW's success, then you will not see major manufacturers truly attempt to emulate a classic, table-top RPG experience. A classic RPG is flexible, and allows for enormous amounts of reconfiguration based upon the imagination of the players themselves. If you implement that flexibility, you remove the schedule of reinforcement that so successfully conditions people to continue to pay and play.
Somehow in the brave new electronic frontier, these qualities are translated into meaningless grind quests, chaotic click-fest combat, and swearing over voicechat.
------------------
Sounds like WoW to me... Seriously, you must be a grade a WoW fanboi or something. I played WoW for like a week and couldn't make myself log in again.
Sure it's popular, but then so is McDonalds. It looks like a disney cartoon and is pretty much a caricature/cliche cutesy mmorpg, with all the monsters having exaggerated hands and feet. It strikes me as very 13 years old. The WoW storylines are seriously weak compared to DDO's.
DDO vs WoW - Pros:
interactable environment: In WoW it's pretty much treasure chests. DDO has traps, underwater passages, secret doors, puzzles, etc etc etc. All the stuff that WoW doesn't.
Storyline. The entire city of stormreach has storyline quests that are all related. In WoW it seems a lot more random and not tied together. You kill 10 of these or 30 of these for a quest reward. Go here and talk to this guy so you can fly somewhere and kill 20 of these. That's not a grind? In DDO, stuff like that is a subquest or part of the overal goal. In WoW it is the goal.
Content: The game went gold 2 weeks ago and a new content patch is coming one month later. You are talking about lack of content?
Blizzard was still trying to get their massive scalability issues worked out 4 weeks in. Content wasn't even on the radar 4 weeks into release. Bashing DDO for lack of content is downright unfair. Not only that, I'm a hardcore gamer (as much as a working adult with a kid can be) and I still haven't seen more than 1/2 of the existing content yet. Granted I got to 5th level in beta, and had to start over, then needed to wait for my box to arrive after release. I have a l4r4 wizard, l3r1 cleric, and a l3r3 rogue already. 12 new dungeons are due on April 1st. New content one month after launch is nothing to sneeze at...
I think you need some perspective my man... WoW has 3 years (or whatever) of content development behind it since gold. DDO's been gold for 2 weeks...
About the combat:
You bash it for being chaotic? What do you thing real life combat with a bunch of kobolds would be like? Think they would stand in front of you in an orderly fashion while you beat them down with your macro? I think WoW's combat is completely retarded. DDO's combat is more real time and actually requires some skill beyond macro programming. I guess if you have no coordination and tend towards panicking it's a little hard to deal with... The AI is phenomenal compared to any other game I've played, including wow.
I got a trial account for WoW again while I was waiting for DDO to go gold and get shipped to me. I couldn't wait for that DDO box to arrive...
-AC
> I am sure most players that had extended beta time like I did, knew every nook and cranny of the
> WaterWorks dungeons.
yeah, something I noticed in the forums was that in voice chat, other party members would describe every nook and cranny of the dungeons.
not sure how you could prevent against that. something that i've been complaining about with crpg's (nwn, morrowind, etc) is the lack of secret doors, but repetition ruins the whole idea of secrets.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
Coming from WoW (who isn't these days?), I would definitely be hesitant to play any game that required grouping. Even at peak time, depending on what quest or instance you're trying to complete, it can take upwards of an hour to get a group of just four other people together. Forcing grouping seems to be basically giving the finger to people who don't play at peak hours. Although maybe the fact that everyone has no choice but to group would make finding partners easier.
:( *log off*".
Also, pickup groups of random people more often than not turn into horror shows that last hours and accomplish little. I routinely wind up in groups that fight through death after death to finally reach the final boss, then a key group member says "aw crap, my mom is making me do homework, sry guyz
Perhaps it will be an amazing game for people who have a group of friends all on the same regular schedule, but I do not, so there's really no incentive for me to try DDO. I love being able to jump on to WoW for half an hour and actually accomplish something on my own, although I guess that changes dramatically at the level cap.
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I tend to agree with most of what you've said here but I think there is something additional worth mentioning. I've been playing the EU version for about a week now and I also play WoW. One thing I think is really good is that it's very easy to find a group. When playing the lower levels of WoW it's very difficult to find players that want to group. In the uppper levels of WoW you really need a guild grouping to get through the higher level instances as pick-up groups are never organized enough. In DDO you NEED to group and they've given you a very useful searching tool to enable you to find groups. I play a bard and perhaps because of her healing skills my perspective is slightly skewed. However, I find I get unsolicited group invites nearly as soon as I enter the game. So I think it is unfair to make the claim that it's hard to find groups because as compared to WoW, DDO has made it much easier to find groups.
One additional comment is that I have seen no roleplaying thus far. I'm starting to despair of roleplaying even existing in the word of MMORPGs.
The odd thing is that MMOG players are so successfully conditioned to the press-button, get-reward, repeat mentality that they execute it frenetically even when the game design specifically provides for varied challenges!
Take WoW for example. Yes, people 'farm' rep and 'farm' that but the whole design is set up so that you can enjoy yourself doing different and new things all the time. Nonetheless, vast numbers of people 'grind' instead of play.
Or, consider DDO, since this article is about DDO. The game is set up to mark an adventure completed when you finish it, so that players experience everything that's been created for them in a variety of adventures.
What do I read on the DDO boards? A vast number of players are doing one mission ("Water Works") over and over and over. Why? Is it fun, challenging? No. These players have mastered it, it's just a matter of rote. They do it because it's very efficient, they can repeat it over and over again and get their XP reward.
To what end? DDO is specifically set up *not* to give you the "you're at the top, now you're ready for the 'real' game (of PvP or raiding or just lording it over others)" as in most MMOGs. You get to the top and there's nothing there, by design.
Doesn't matter. click click click, grind grind grind.
It's perfectly possible to have a good challenging experience in DDO, or WoW, or any of the other MMOGs, but you have to get away from the well-conditioned rats first.
Im no tech-head, but how will Apple's decision to move over to an intel chipset influence whether MMORPGs are released for the system, will it potentially solve the DirectX bottleneck, if that is indeed what is stopping OSX development? I guess if nothing else mac users could install windows on their machines and use it to play windows-only MMORPGs, no?