New players vs Vets

[kanordog]

i've been waiting a long time for a thread like this, yes!!!

So glad to be on the vet's team. We are going to kick the **** out of the new players team. They are so soft and don't know all the sweet moves!!!!

Vets vets vets

new players vs vets.......you're going down new players!!!

gogogo vets

[Weemadarthur]

Umm there are lots of new players. I see new people posting all the time for newbie advice here and on other sites.

I dont think most people go and play a new game and expect to never be asked to pay any money ever, or get offended if they are and immediately quit. They just go play a different quest that's free. You can get to L10 or so in F2P quests without ever breaking stride. By that point you're not on the fence anymore about the game, you're either in or you're out.

There is no "paywall" in DDO, its one of the most liberal F2P models there is.

Well said +1

As a completely f2p player (with the exception of the x-packs which I happily paid for as my token gesture towards supporting the game) I can honestly say the DDO f2p model is one of the best I have encountered in any MMO. I would go as far as to say that considering how many store points can be earned per life from f2p quests and the mostly reasonable price of packs from the store it is not only possible but actually quite easy to go from 1-20 for a 1st life player just using the points earned by playing the game to buy 2 or 3 extra packs. The only reason anyone has to ever open their wallet is for convenience.

Is the game a little better and easier if you do pay? Definitely yes!

Do you ever have to pay? Most definitely no!

With a few notable exceptions you can gain everything in the game for no cost whatsoever.

For those that doubt this I can honestly say my total expenditure on the game to date since I restarted in 2010 is under £200 and that includes the amount I spent buying MOTU and Shadowfell for my daughter and her younger brother. I currently have 5 character slots, all content except feywild (although I did get restless Isles & cannith manufactury free with the coupon code last year), Greater tomes of learning on 3 characters, a +1 racial tome, a +1 universal AP tome, all races except warforged, halfelf and halforc, all classes except druid and currently 40 slots in my shared bank + 240 (or there abouts) in my shared ingredients bank. All of this was bought with points earned by just playing a game I enjoy playing.

[Varr]

Sorry, You are actually new player friendly. Please leave the pitch immediatelly.

Ah man.............Thats a secret!!! Your killing my Vet street cred!!

[kanordog]

Ah man.............Thats a secret!!! Your killing my Vet street cred!!

Oooops....

I edited my post

[Bjond]

A new character SHOULD NOT be able to do what my triple class completionist, triple Iconic completionist, triple racial completionist, triple epic completionist, with 88 reaper points can do. For them to be able to do that completely robs me of all my hard work.

The point isn't to rob you. The point is to give you people to group with. DDO is shrinking. Without some mechanism to permit a disparity of power to function together as a team (and thus keep having fun), pretty soon you'll find yourself "all powered up and no-one to play with".

IMHO, "lead spillover" is a really bad way to go. Overall goal of "more groupies" is good. Method will just make things worse. The only thing going for it is "cheap to implement". This method just makes it easier for a big fish to tow little fish and does nothing at all to fix the underlying problem, which is a monumental disparity in group contribution based entirely on character power rather than player skill.

A better overall goal is to increase team synergy. One thing I liked about the old FFXI MMO was it had a phenomenal synergy concept. Your team didn't have to avail itself, but if it did, your rate of progress was about 3~4x higher than one not using it. And, groups in general were about 10x faster than solo'ing.

DDO has serious flaws that would preclude making group progress scale up more than linearly v solo -- it basically has to support fast solo because of the way levels divide the tiny population. It could provide much more satisfying group play without completely upsetting progression rates, though.

[DerpDerply]

Nope, not embracing it.
I want it gone.

You don’t need to embrace it, but you’re gonna have to deal with it existing.

[Coffey]

Well said +1

As a completely f2p player (with the exception of the x-packs which I happily paid for as my token gesture towards supporting the game) I can honestly say the DDO f2p model is one of the best I have encountered in any MMO. I would go as far as to say that considering how many store points can be earned per life from f2p quests and the mostly reasonable price of packs from the store it is not only possible but actually quite easy to go from 1-20 for a 1st life player just using the points earned by playing the game to buy 2 or 3 extra packs. The only reason anyone has to ever open their wallet is for convenience.

Is the game a little better and easier if you do pay? Definitely yes!

Do you ever have to pay? Most definitely no!

With a few notable exceptions you can gain everything in the game for no cost whatsoever.

For those that doubt this I can honestly say my total expenditure on the game to date since I restarted in 2010 is under £200 and that includes the amount I spent buying MOTU and Shadowfell for my daughter and her younger brother. I currently have 5 character slots, all content except feywild (although I did get restless Isles & cannith manufactury free with the coupon code last year), Greater tomes of learning on 3 characters, a +1 racial tome, a +1 universal AP tome, all races except warforged, halfelf and halforc, all classes except druid and currently 40 slots in my shared bank + 240 (or there abouts) in my shared ingredients bank. All of this was bought with points earned by just playing a game I enjoy playing.

And you got all that in only 10 years wow thats fast!

The current F2P model will not help build the player base in a way that will give Vets more people to carry err i mean play with.

[Somebody87]

I usually never post but after watching Severlin's interview I have a few concerns.
In order to address an issue of large power gaps between players, he mentions that there is consideration to build in functionality where the power of the party leader can spill over or enhance the party members by "power sharing" in order to help weaker characters run content with stronger characters.

I couldn't disagree with this approach more. As a veteran who has been playing DDO since 2007 and paying subscription fees (yes I feel this is important to distinguish) I have spent an enormous amount of time, effort, and money to power up my characters. Now we are saying that a brand new player to the game should be able to do what I can do by simply being in party with me?
What entitles a new character who has put in none of the work or effort to expect to do what a more seasoned character can do?

I would LOVE a system that would let me power share. It is so annoying to be in r8 and the only person doing any real damage. Half the time, when I go down or get distracted, the party either wipes or it gets stalled beating down a DOOM for several MINUTES. For reference, I can kill an r8 Doom in 15 seconds by myself. I could be pickier about who I ran with, but frankly, that would require waiting longer for groups which is annoying, and soloing is boring.

If others could benefit from my power, I could depend on them to be contributing. I wouldn't feel cheated about grinding past lives because I know I am benefiting. Hell, if anything, having insane stats would be MORE important because you would want the most OP party leader possible to be buffing the party like a kind of player vengeance buff. Strategy would also become more important because you could have the buffs fade if the leader dies so the leader living would be made almost critical.

There is also the aspect that it would matter who the party leader was since their stats could determine the buffs (ie have tank be leader to make party less squishy, have DPS be leader to increase party DPS).

[Dark_Lord_Mary]

I usually never post but after watching Severlin's interview I have a few concerns.
In order to address an issue of large power gaps between players, he mentions that there is consideration to build in functionality where the power of the party leader can spill over or enhance the party members by "power sharing" in order to help weaker characters run content with stronger characters.

I couldn't disagree with this approach more. As a veteran who has been playing DDO since 2007 and paying subscription fees (yes I feel this is important to distinguish) I have spent an enormous amount of time, effort, and money to power up my characters. Now we are saying that a brand new player to the game should be able to do what I can do by simply being in party with me?
What entitles a new character who has put in none of the work or effort to expect to do what a more seasoned character can do?

A new character SHOULD NOT be able to do what my triple class completionist, triple Iconic completionist, triple racial completionist, triple epic completionist, with 88 reaper points can do. For them to be able to do that completely robs me of all my hard work. It is absurd that they even EXPECT to do that.

I do understand that some new players feel intimidated by powerful veterans so this should be addressed, but not by taking away the meaning of all the hard work veterans have put into their characters. There are other ways. Here are a few suggestions to get the though process going.

1. Create a "Power Tier" concept.
For example, lets say a character earns 1 power point for each reincarnation and each reaper point.
Class completionist = 15 points. Triple completionist = 45 points.
Triople Epic completionist = 36 points
Triple racial completionist = 36 points
Triple Iconic completionist = 24 points
Each Reaper point = 1 point

So the character I mentioned above would have 229 power points. I think it should be clear why this character would be a lot more powerful than a newer character with maybe only 3 reincarnations and thus 3 power points.

Now you can take the Power points a character has and put it somewhere visible to other players (perhaps behind the floaty character name). This serves several purposes.
It gives veterans a way to show off their accomplishments. No matter how humble people try to pretend to be, you can tell this is important to many people just by listening to them brag about their accomplishments in groups.
Second, it gives people a way to include or exclude certain power levels in their groups.

A party can post for "No higher than 20 power points plz" or "no less than 50 power points plz" or "Open to all power points" depending on the type of group they desire to run with.
This way everyone can decide for themselves if they are not comfortable running with high or low powered characters in party.

Another option is to dedicate FTP servers vs PTP servers since often times FTP are the underpowered players.

Please keep in mind that the loudest voice is not always the majority of voices. Nor are they necessarily the voices that put money into this game to support it.
I'm not trying to bash FTP players but try to remember that it takes financial support to keep any game running.
My hope is that this is not a flame war over FTP and PTP but instead, hopefully some people can contribute other alternatives to "power sharing"

Being a Vet and a dungeons and dragons purist I do not like the proposed grouping ideas AT ALL.
they are recycling grouping enhancements from LOTRO - LOTRO is a different game, a WoW clone,
DDO does not nor should it become a WoW clone.
DDO's niche is as an online source of Dungeons and Dragons gaming; yes its a homebrew ruleset
of 3.4/4/5e but further changing it with pure MMO video game tweaks will likely further polarize
the community,

the simple fact remains it is a 15 year old game. New Players CANNOT log in and compete with a
vet, nor should they be able to - we cannot allow 15 years of our grinding be muted, watered down
and thrown away to accommodate new players in R10 content they should instantly die in.

It may be where SSG tacks into waters I will not follow if they insist on adding some sort of
LOTRO captain's buff to DDO groups - How will it fit into existing Dungeons and Dragons lore?
Are there 5e rules that buff groups based on a leader?
Do vets even want the attention of literally every new player wanting to quest and raid
with them because the new buffs become the new meta?

Its uninspired and worrisome and very misguided.

New players cannot just cry and get 15 years for free, if the goal is to do that,
just sell reaper points on the DDO store and make some money -

[krimsonrane]

Exactly what is taken away from your character?

Exactly what is it that you loose?

a sense of excessive superiority. It's the pali who doesn't want anyone in their protective radius

[HippieBallz]

so i have been playing as both f2p at my start and p2p later in my time with ddo and while i feel the power gap has grown i do feel it is right to find a way to even temparly to help bump the newer players joining harder content (multi R) as this content was introduced as a means to challenge those who had taken time to grind the many lives and gear items needed to break a class or mechanic they enjoyed in the game. and while it did work for a while i feel all it did was cause a worse issue with the gap in power and amount of LFM post. anymore more i hear from older vets like myself that they no longer even lfm for riads or quest as its just a pain to carry a new player thats 2k less hp in an epic r1 than them. As vets, we should be working to help bring these players to a level where they feel both powerful and helpful to both group and guild. I am not one of the trip completionist of everything in the game by any means but i have worked hard and with a completionist toon that has 20 RP i still feel gimp to some of these vets that are self culling the game player base from the rest of the servers. I hope that we soon see an incentive for us vets to open these harder runs to the newer player teaching them and helping them grow power faster. i would be happy with a simple cosmetic reward system like the champ coins for higher power toons that run with lower power toons. i did like the idea of Player PowerPoints that grant a way to rate what type of reward you receive per quest in terms of the amount with a turn-in vender that grants items only to those that do these (guided runs) idk maybe call the coins or turn in currency bastion bonds or a buff like that when they are close to the toon. many ways to do it and both reward the vets for becoming more open to teaching again and the newer players in the ability to at least add RP to thier builds as they work on the long grind we vets have done