D&D Online gets an upgrade

[GlassJaw]

Looks interesting… But I refuse to buy anything I must remain connected to the internet to play.

That's a very dated and close-minded point of view.

But as far as the new DDP patch goes, it's so-so. There are quests that are now solo-only and some that have a solo option. The solo stuff is ok but it's clearly geared towards players new to the game, especially those that have little to no PnP experience.

One of the compliants people had about DDO was that it had a difficult learning curve to overcome. I never really had a problem but having PnP experience gives you a huge advantage.

Along with the solo quests, Turbine also "shifted" the XP down. You now level up faster from levels 1-3 but need the same amount to advance after that. The "problem" is that by doing this, they end up taking content away because you now get to the mid-level quests faster and thereby skip over more of the early content.

But again, one of the complaints was that it was taking too long for new players to get through the early levels. It's also getting a bit more difficult to find lower-level groups these days so that may have been a factor as well.

The biggest point of contention with this patch though was the removal of a high-level chest which Turbine snuck in the release notes at the last minute. Basically, since there is very little to do once you have hit the level cap, people would repeat a quest to get the chest at the end. People seem to be less upset at the fact that they removed the chest and more at the fact that Turbine a) was rather hush-hush about it until the last minute and b) by removing it, they give the high-level players one less thing to do.

Is farming a chest a good thing? No, probably not. But Turbine brought it on themselves and now leaves the capped players with another reason to not play.

And how did this turn into a NWN discussion?

 

[Evil Monkey]

Isn't one of the main problems with the game the fact that you can level so fast? If you ripped through a quest in 30 minutes, that's not a lot of play time is it? AFAIK, there are only 20 solo quests, right?

I wouldn't say you level very fast, unless you're one of those people that play 8 hours a day. I've been playing for about two months now, roughly 2-3 hours most days (sometimes longer, sometimes none at all) and I got a Wizard5, Fighter3, Paladin2, and Barbarian1.

If you have a lot of time to devote to playing, then yeah, I'd suppose you level up fast. But that's not my experience.

One thing to remember is that the XP table is different. At first, it was the regular table multiplied by 10 (10,000xp to lvl 2, 30,000xp to lvl 3, and so on). Yesterday's update reduced the xp required for lvl 2 to 5000 and lvl 3 to 20,000 (I think), and the rest of the levels are the same (though the total needed to advance is the same, the target number is lower).

As for the number of solo quests, the game is really meant for group play. The solo quests are only in the first major area that characters get access to. There's actually only 4 or 5 quests that are truly "solo", in that only one person can do them. The rest of the quests are group quests with an option to do it solo (appropriately challenged for 1 character, or so they say ).

The purpose of this, IMO, is so that people can get their characters through the first 3 levels or so quickly so they can move on to the more difficult quests in others areas, which usually haev cooler monsters and better treasure.

 

[Evil Monkey]

Not had a chance to play yet, are they easy to find these new solo quests how do you know they are solo?

The only quests that can be played solo are in the Harbor. Some quests are solo only and cannot be played if you are in a party. The other quests are the group quests, and they've added a "Solo" box to check in addition to the "Normal", "Hard", and "Elite" boxes if you want to play solo.

 

[GlassJaw]

I wouldn't say you level very fast, unless you're one of those people that play 8 hours a day. I've been playing for about two months now, roughly 2-3 hours most days (sometimes longer, sometimes none at all) and I got a Wizard5, Fighter3, Paladin2, and Barbarian1.

That's actually quite slow, especially since you have multiple characters. You'll find that most "casual" players that have been playing for a month or so have a capped character and a couple of alts of varying levels.

Compared to other games, you level up VERY fast in DDO. With the recent XP shift, you level up even faster at the lower levels now. Heck, I made a new alt just to try out the new solo quests and was at level 2 in about an hour and a half and I was playing a bard. If I was playing a melee character it probably would have been faster.

All I need now is a run through a couple of the longer Harbor quests (maybe an hour or two) and I'll be at level 3 and in the Marketplace.

 

[Evil Monkey]

That's actually quite slow, especially since you have multiple characters. You'll find that most "casual" players that have been playing for a month or so have a capped character and a couple of alts of varying levels.

See, now this surprises me. I have a friend that plays a bit more than I do and his main character is still 5th lvl too. Maybe we're just "ultra-casual" players? But that's ok. I'd rather take it slow and enjoy it than play for a month and already accomplish everything in the game. To each their own.

Compared to other games, you level up VERY fast in DDO. With the recent XP shift, you level up even faster at the lower levels now.

I can believe that. I have no experience playing other MMORPGs, so I don't have anything to compare progression rates. I was just speaking from my experience with DDO and the Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale games.

 

[GlassJaw]

See, now this surprises me. I have a friend that plays a bit more than I do and his main character is still 5th lvl too. Maybe we're just "ultra-casual" players? But that's ok. I'd rather take it slow and enjoy it than play for a month and already accomplish everything in the game. To each their own.

How and what you play has a lot to do with how fast you level up as well. That's why you see some quests being run a lot more than others: Water Works, Shan To Kur, Stormcleave, the Threnal series, Vault of Night, etc. These give huge amounts of XP.

You also get a bonus when you run a quest for the first time (+25% on normal and hard, +50% on elite). If you are doing a quest for the first time, always run it on normal if you can.

This is another basic problem with DDO overall: the challenge vs XP/loot rewards of a lot of quests is out of balance. There are some quests that people just don't run because they are "worth" it in terms of the difficulty vs the reward.

There are a lot of cool quets that people ignore because of this.

 

[Farganger]

How and what you play has a lot to do with how fast you level up as well. That's why you see some quests being run a lot more than others: Water Works, Shan To Kur, Stormcleave, the Threnal series, Vault of Night, etc. These give huge amounts of XP.

You also get a bonus when you run a quest for the first time (+25% on normal and hard, +50% on elite). If you are doing a quest for the first time, always run it on normal if you can.

This is another basic problem with DDO overall: the challenge vs XP/loot rewards of a lot of quests is out of balance. There are some quests that people just don't run because they are "worth" in terms of the difficulty vs the reward.

There are a lot of cool that people ignore because of this.

This explains much. I was going to disagree with your thoughts on speed of levelling as well, since neither I nor any of the folks I played with for a few months got any of our characters above 5th. But I think your definition of "casual" player is quite different from mine.

We definitely played a few hours a day for quite a few weeks, but didn't get into the "cherrypicking" of quests you refer to.

 

[Orius]

And how did this turn into a NWN discussion?

Because it's the better D&D game.

 

[Dinkeldog]

I've been out of the loop, happily playing WoW. Here are my questions for DDO before I'm even ready to touch it:

Have they added druids yet?

Have they added psionics yet?

Have they added Shifters yet?

Until two of the three are "yes" I'm probably going to keep my limited time and not really get into it.

 

[Evil Monkey]

I've been out of the loop, happily playing WoW. Here are my questions for DDO before I'm even ready to touch it:

Have they added druids yet?

Have they added psionics yet?

Have they added Shifters yet?

Nope for all three.