Suggestions/Feedback (Satine)

[CultOfTheSix]

I would like to offer some feedback and suggestions. I hope that this somehow finds it's way to the developers.

Seeing how disrespectfull and outright offensive some of the replies to other threads of this kind have been i would like to ask you to not reply if are not going to explain why you disagree. You have the right to your opinion as much as i have to mine but i will not reply to any form of bashing or flaming and i encourage everyone to ignore such replies aswell.


1. Balancing/Difficulty/Experience
The amount of experience gained at levels 1-4 is too fast. It gets better around 4-7 but from 7-10 it becomes a repetitive grind.

The problem from 1-4 is that you will be too high for the quests before you even done all of them. Sure you can choose to do the quest at medium and hard but this will just add more experience and they will get too easy before you have done them all.
Some might say that you don't have to level up. Valid point but you still gain the experience even if you choose not to level. And let's be serious, who will not level and add nice skills and feats if he can.

In the mid levels around 4-7 it gets a little better and you can spend alot of time in Market and the House Quests. But eventually they get way to easy for a group of 6 well traveled adventurers.

At the late levels 7-10 there is a limited amount of quest left that do offer a challange. Most of the time doing them in hard will not change that as you have learned from playing them in normal and you come prepared. Elite however does offer a real challange especially in quest like Gwynlans Stand, Stormcleave, or Cult of the Six.

The second issue i have with the balancing is that the quests level does not reflect it's real difficulty. You can find level 6 Quests that are very easy and some that are very hard. This is mostly related to the type of monsters you will face and obstacles you have to overcome. I can take the same balanced group into both quests and we will likely wipe on the hard one.

Action Points become completely useless in later levels. What is the point in having 5 Action Points if i can only change a maximum of 4 Enhancement? Some might say you could change them for special Quests but then 5 are not enough to change back. It's one of the examples how badly designed this game is.

1.A Solutions.
I am by no means an expert in game design or balancing a game so i can not offer any solutions other than to simply change the experience gained from quests. I am sure we all agree that experience is not everything. The Quests and Dungeons are awesome in design and alot of fun. I would play them for less experience if they stay challangeing. No matter how hard you try, once you are too strong the quests just don't offer any excitement anymore. Same is true for the higher level quests. They should be really hard and long with lesser shrines and in return offer more experience. There should also be more high level quests but this has been mentioned often enough already.

Action Points should be removed completely as they are useless the way they are implemented now. You restriced me to 4 Enhancements, fine, let me change them anytime i want. The party can not find a Rogue? Ok, that Ranger has 1 level Rogue and changes his Enhancements to Skill Ingenuinity and Rogue Boost I. Need a full Power Ranger? Ok change back to Ranged Damage I or FE Damage I. It's as simple as that but not posible cause the game has such poor balancing to start with.


2. Economy/Items/Rewards
The game simply does not have an economy at all. Currency is completely worthless. You can not buy anything higher than +1 items from regular NPC vendors and player trading is rare and the game does not encourage or support it with an Auction House.

It might be just me, but i find it hard to understand why a Potion of remove blindness costs 800+ gold while at the same time the very same NPC vendor will give me 200 gold for an armor that has a base value of 10,000 gold.

The Brokers are ridiculous and useless. They give me 2,000 gold for +4 items but i have to pay 40,000 gold to buy one. Sure they pay a few more gold than the regular NPC vendors but that does not change the fact that i feel more than ripped off.

I expect that if i progress in a game and i need to upgrade my weapons and armor that i can sell my old armor and invest a reasonable amount to get the one that is one level above the current one.

This brings me to the next issue. Lack of equipment. The only way to get an item you want for your character is by pure luck. You either get it from a chest or reward or you are lucky and someone sold it to a broker and you saw it first. There simply is no way for me to upgrade my +3 Longbow to a +4 Longbow other than by chance or repeating quests over and over again until I get that bow.

Another point is that Armor, Weapons and Scrolls are rewarded alot more often than clothing, jewelery or trinkets. I have yet to see a trinket rewarded other than the one you get from Waterworks.

What good is it if i have 10,000pp if i can not buy that +4 Chainmail of fire resistance i so desire just because no one has ever got this item from a chest or it never was sold to a broker? Given the fact that the items are created randomly from all available effects it might aswell happen that this armor NEVER exists on your server.
What i am saying here is that i want to be able to decide and reward myself for the loot i have gathered in the dungeons and sold to outrageously low prices to vendors.

2.A Solutions
An obvious solution would be to add vendors that will offer you equipment based on your level. Vendors that will upgrade your equipment. Vendors that will put enchantments on equipment.

Add a Quest that will result in some adamantine Ore that you give to a Dwarven Blacksmith and he will craft a weapon or armor for you. Race/Class specific Quests that will reward you with items specific to your Race/Class. (see point 4 Quests for more details on this issue).

3. Collectors
While i like the idea of collecting things for a reward, I don't like the way it is implemented. The amount of different collectibles and the randomness of the rewards just makes this a chore not fun. It would be great if players would start to trade these items to get a set they can trade in. The idea itself is great and has alot of potential. But the game needs to support this and help players to trade. Just standing in a tavern shouting for them is not gonna work.

I won't even go into the inventory issues here as this should be more than obvious. The main problem with the collectables is that you are essentialy playing lottery. It's fine that you get potions or arrows for the common collectibles and weapons or armor for the rare ones. But if i get shuriken, bolts, throwing daggers as a ranger that uses bows exclusively i can only go sell them and hope for more luck next time.

I should also mention that there are collectors items with a description that reads: "needs description." It just shows how unfinished the game really is. There is no collector that takes those, at least none that i know of.

3.A Solutions
Solve the Inventory issue, this could be done with a special collectors bag (you could get in a special Quests -> see point 4) and make them stack up to 50 or even 99.

If i trade in the 3/3 items give me a list of Potions, Amunition or Scrolls i can choose from. Same for the 1/1 items, create a list of weapons from every type with random bonuses so i can choose a bow and don't get a dwarven greataxe that i can't use.

Take it one step further and have different collectors hand out different types of weapons or enchantments on weapons to encourage interaction between players and trade. I will trade my funghi that can be handed in for a heavy armor with someone who has the prayer beads i need to get my light armor any day, if i could.

I want to interact with players in a multiplayer game on more levels than just grouping up and killing monsters.

[CultOfTheSix]

...continued

4. Quests
While i love the detail and the effort that has been put into the design of the dungeons, I miss the purpose other than completing the Quest and finding treasure chests.
Don't get me wrong, there are some great Quests like Waterworks, Shan-to-Kor, Gwynlands Stand, Cult of the Six or the Raid Quest (forgot the name sorry) just to name a few. I had alot of fun doing them!
However, most of the Quests feel like the standard first Quest of every RPG, "Kill the rats in the Cellar of the Inn".
There are other Quests but those get repeated aswell like, Protect Object X, Defend Outpost Y or Rescue the Girl/Priest/Hobgoblin.

There are no Quest that are Race or Class specific and reward items apropriate for that Race or Class.

Right now you will see people LFG with the comment "any x+ quests". They don't care what Quest they will do. Cause it makes no difference. The experience is the same, the rewards are completely random. Most of the time i have joined a group no one wants a specific Quest done (post Waterworks), in the end we do the same quest we done a few times before cause the experience and the rewards are good with the potential for a great item if youre lucky. This happened on almost ALL random groups i joined and shows how indifferent people are towards the Quests or Story behind a Quest. I can assure you if you did a questionaire about Shan-to-Kor that a high percentage don't even know the story other than "I had to get the seal and killed a giant".

4A. Solution
Obviously Quests that give me the feeling that i am an Elf or Ranger and that reward me with items specifically for my Race/Class. A quest that would give you a bag for those collector items would be great. Quests that open new Quests and access to new areas, you could have done Quests to access every single House in Marketplace as an example. This would encourage people to group together and build an entire Elf party to get that rare item. It would encourage people to do different Quests cause the Ranger wants Quests X, Cleric Quest Y for the rewards. Possibilites are endless and i am sure that most of the people on this board could come up with at least 10 Quests without breaking sweat.


5. Closing Comment
Its alot of fun doing the Quests, even if they are somewhat repetitive. With a good group that does not rush and everyone playing their role even without hardcore RP it's one of the best dungeon/party experiences i had so far.
This does however not change the fact that the game as it is now is unfinished and lacks any form of interaction between players other than grouping and dungeon crawling. It's randomness is the biggest downfall, most of the problems the game has are rooted there and in the lack of purpose other than completing just about any Quest for exp and random rewards. I totally miss the feeling i have accomplished something great and got the rare weapon i wanted or i really made a difference by finishing this quest and i am now recognized a Hero of House Jorasco.
The game totally lacks any balancing or pacing. Experienced players that form a guild or static party can do all of the ~130 Quests in about 2 weeks at 2h a day WITHOUT rushing and even doing some of them in medium or hard. I bet real D&D fans with good knowledge about the system could do it in 3-4 weekends with no rushing.

I also like to mention that there is NOTHING to do while you are looking for a group. Yes, NOTHING. You can stare at the screen for 30+ minutes until you find a party. It almost makes me laugh cause the game forces you to group. It's really sad how bad the design is.

It was a nice try, but at this point the game fails to live up to its franchise. Let's see what the future brings, right now i give it 4/10 and a lifespan of 6 months.

[Sternenkind]

Yes, two pages full of truth. Now we only need someone who cares to read it and apply the solutions to the game. Of course, all this has been posted multiple times, and I am sure the fanboys will soon start to tell you that it is all not true, but there still is hope for this game.

[Healana]

I do not agree on all you said, as regarding interactivity between people, I mean it's people that don't interact!!! when you meet someone, you can say hello!!! sometime players has to do a bit to get something different!!!

The game is as it is, not really RP oriented (outside a party of 6 or 12 in RAID) So it's up to you to be RP all the time !!! the game will not do it for you!!!

Regarding the feature you get between levels, you find it useless, that's your point of view, I find it great and for an only reason, I played 3 different cleric, same stats for all of them , but the feat I choose for each made my character completly different from the other: an undead specialist, a mobile shrine, a fighter healer!!!! without the feature this game would have been useless!!!

The only negative point I have regarding DDO (well I have some more but the biggest!!!) is that in ONE week your character can be lvl 10 !!! and this is really a shame, as people, when they have tried 2 or 3 differents class, will just get bored and leave the game, and 3 character lvl 10 it's less than a month !!!! some people are paying for 3 months!!! and I am quite sure Turbine will not implement level 20 next month !!!! so yes this game need to change the XP reward, it should be more difficult to be a high level !!!

Nothing against you Cultofthesix :) just exposing the view of a french woman (btw sorry for my english :()

[Somniloquy]

I read every word of this post, twice. I can see your point about the story behind quests being a bit of an irrelevance and like so many other MMORPGs the lack of dedicated writers is obvious. Compare this to the delicious FFXI where quests and quest series are linked and are interperesed with numerous cut scenes and culminate in some kind of real conclusion. When you unlock some new area or quest sequence you get titles and really feel like you have accomplished something. But the original FFXI story threads were not much better than in this game (with a few notable exceptions) and its in the expansions that things really took off.

You comments on economy fill me with dread. Race Specific and Class Specific quests would become essential if introduced and this has been proven in EQ, WoW and FFXI. The concept introduces selfishness into the game for most, and desperation and misery for many others.

I like the random nature of the chest loot system, its funny, the monsters treasure hordes are a mix of what I lovingly call "vendor trash". I certainly cant update my equipment in any structured way, so have simply adjusted to not worrying about it too much. When I have enough cash Ill go buy a nice armour or weapon. Like in PnP DnD I dont really think about items I have seen in some database or book and lust after them. It makes a nice change to ahve an MMORPG work in this way, its part of what will keep me playing. The days of WTB/WTS are really behind us, lets keep it that way.

Action points, I almost agree with you. But then again I dont. No I wouldnt change it. You get enough action points between levels to upgrade or swap out some enhancements. You may have spare that are wasted at level -up. But this isnt a waste, its just an option that players choose not to excercise. The couple of points I threw away at level 3 werent a waste, they were simply not needed. But If I had chosen something at an earlier rank and decided that was a bad choice then I could have at least changed it without feeling gimped.

As for levelling. Well, having played PnP DnD I have no complaints here. The levels 4-7 always were an optimum time and beyond that things slowed down, level 9 used to be a landmark point and took some real work to get to. Beyond that things were always slow. The advantage of this is that you get to play around with your new abilities for quite some time before being given new options. Not making sense? Okay lets put it like this : In WoW by the time you fly through 20 levels in a weekend most, if not all the spells or skills you thought were nice at level 10 are now useless and you drop them from your shortcuts. In DDO this doesnt happen and egtting to level 7, say as a Wizard and getting lvl 4 spells, you now get quite a while to play around with them and have some fun before getting level 5 spells. I just think this is a good thing.

[CultOfTheSix]

I do not agree on all you said, as regarding interactivity between people, I mean it's people that don't interact!!! when you meet someone, you can say hello!!! sometime players has to do a bit to get something different!!!

I did not mean that kind of interaction. Of cause you can go into an Inn and say "Hello", but the chances are very high that no one will see it cause of the spam in the general channel. Sure, like in other games i play i will salute a fellow elf or bow to a player that helped me out if i see him again. I meant more incentives to interact at all outside of a dungeon.


Regarding the feature you get between levels, you find it useless, that's your point of view, I find it great and for an only reason, I played 3 different cleric, same stats for all of them , but the feat I choose for each made my character completly different from the other: an undead specialist, a mobile shrine, a fighter healer!!!! without the feature this game would have been useless!!!


Again, you got me wrong there. Of cause it is great to customize your character and create different types of characters that specialize. But the problem is that you most likely don't change that one character once you decided on a route (the undead bashing cleric) so your Action Points are useless as you wont need them at all later on.


The only negative point I have regarding DDO (well I have some more but the biggest!!!) is that in ONE week your character can be lvl 10 !!! and this is really a shame, as people, when they have tried 2 or 3 differents class, will just get bored and leave the game, and 3 character lvl 10 it's less than a month !!!!

You can rush to level 10 in a Duo/Trio party in 24h. Thats how bad it is. But thats not the intention of the game. It's about enjoying the Role playing and not rushing thru levels. I somehow even see this as positive cause all the powergamers and rushers will be gone and you will find more Quality parties. But even then the content is too little to keep you busy for more than maybe 2 months if you take it really slow.


Nothing against you Cultofthesix :) just exposing the view of a french woman (btw sorry for my english :()

Je n'ai pas probleme. Thank you for your constructive reply and excuse my bad french :)

[Keldric]

Yes, two pages full of truth. Now we only need someone who cares to read it and apply the solutions to the game. Of course, all this has been posted multiple times, and I am sure the fanboys will soon start to tell you that it is all not true, but there still is hope for this game.

Funny how someone can post constructive criticism, only to have someone else post something like 'and if you don't like it you're a fanboy'. Pathetic. Missed the point again there Stern.

[Vardia]

Another Problem that leads to repeating the same quests all the time is the loot rewards. Some quests like redwillow ruins had rewards that were up to their level or better and most others even way harder quests dont give good chests and end rewards.
Stormcleave outpost is nice exp but gives masterwork and +1 items (its lvl 8).
So you might do it for exp a bit, but redwillow was that often done cause you didnt only get good exp but also had a chance to find a good item.
Good things are really rare, cause most of the time you find some weird combination noone will ever use and you can just sell it to vendor. Chests being random is totally ok tho, but they should be at the adventure level and not far below.

But the npc giving you the end reward should know what you want and give you at least something that you can use (your class / race) how often did you all pick a +4 mace or something that was then warforged only ...
Or even better have the NPC reward the group not the player.
Give the entire group a big list of loot and everyone can choose an item from it (all can change the same too to be fair).
Also the quest journal should list the quests for normal hard and elite. And the rewards have to scale up accordingly.

[CultOfTheSix]

Somniloquy, thanks for the great reply.

I am a long time FFXI player (75 Summoner, 50+ most other Jobs, took me 2 years to get there) and you hit the nail on the head saying that writing is awefull and that the original FFXI was a bit shallow aswell but by no means like this game.

I also do agree with you on the economy point and at first i was really happy that this game tries a new aproach. I hate the greediness that is present in many games. What i fear is that due to the total randomness and the lack of incentive to sell the "vendor trash" to the brokers for others to pick up, alot of very nice gear will simply get recycled and never finds a new owner.

I give you an example why i think the Action Points are useless. I play a Ranger/Rogue simply because these two classes do have alot in common and i like to be flexible. For this to work i have to choose Elvan Dex, Rangers Dex, Rogue Action Boost I and Skill Ingenuinity I. This leaves me with no use for action points until i get the respective level II enhancements. If i could change them at will i would use the Rogue Enhancements if the party does not find a Rogue, or the Ranger Damage Enhancement if we have a Rogue. It would add to the way i like to play my character and give me more flexibility.

It depends what class you play. Not all classes get new abilities every level. In fact most of them don't. Mages get Spells and Fighters get a truckload. But Rangers, Rogues, Babarians stay static most of the time.

Again thanks for your comments.

[Sternenkind]

Funny how someone can post constructive criticism, only to have someone else post something like 'and if you don't like it you're a fanboy'. Pathetic. Missed the point again there Stern.

Amazing ain't it, now let's see if we can give his post some attention.

[Daruk]

Amazing ain't it, now let's see if we can give his post some attention.
The only one fishing for attention I can find on this board is you.
Back to the pit with you, ugly troll.

WTB Flametongue or at least some flasks of oil

btt:

Long term motivation:
The lack of content is really pretty concerning, I hope the powers that be can come up with some really good additional, free content.
Having lots of lvl 10s sitting around with nothing to do would be a shame.
Is there a job open with Turbine as a Dungeon Master? ;)

world design:
make it more variable, by randomly shifting traps, monster placement in the quests, give the NPCs something to do, not just wandering back and forth between 2 places. Everything feels just so static.
OTOH I really like the different designs for the same weapons.

economy:
IMO fine as it is, +1 items are available, everything else needs to be found & sold, this surely prevents all lvl10 characters of the same class looking like clones.
Regarding the price differences between buy/sell at the vendors, serves you right not to put some points into CHA & haggling ;)
I've noticed way better prices i the harbor after completing WW and I'd expect the same for the house vendors.
Maybe we could make the NPC vendors sensitive to charm person / diplomacy / intimidate to a certain extent (DC 60 to get the full value for your next item you sell?)

Just a few thoughts, that probably will be ignored like all the others...

[Keldric]

The only one fishing for attention I can find on this board is you.
Back to the pit with you, ugly troll.

Sad but true.

BTW the OP said something about vendors related to level - there's a shop in House Kundarak that is not yet reachable (over the bridges) Which sounds like the sort of thing that you're looking for (fingers crossed anyway). Possibly there will be others in other currently unaccessible areas too?

[Sternenkind]

The only one fishing for attention I can find on this board is you.
Back to the pit with you, ugly troll.


Maybe, still good ideas in here though.

[Thyriel]

1. Balancing/Difficulty/Experience
The amount of experience gained at levels 1-4 is too fast. It gets better around 4-7 but from 7-10 it becomes a repetitive grind.


Its just in fact a matter of how people do play. If you start doing things like redwillow with lvl3/4 (lvl7 quest), cult of the six (lvl8-10quest) with lvl6 its no wonder that you run out of quests with lvl7. Actually we had in beta lvl9 players that did not repeat much quests. They mostly did all the mid level quests on the proper level (1-2 lvl before quest lvl), most of them on hard or elite again. If you go that way instead of just doing the "good xp" quests repeatable and just think "yeah lets do that high lvl quest its easy and we get 40% bonus xp due to lvl" it just works out well.

[Danelle]

Please, a bank, where can put our cash in, I cannot understand such strict rules on encumber, due to many items, or Negitive spell cast on you (str) yet we can get around carrying the contents of the fort knox bank!

Right now my ranger, the poor girl is carrying around 5679pp 7546 gold 234 silver and a few copper!

By rights she should not be able to move at all with that amount.

Come one please let us bank our cash!

Danelle

[Huckster]

I think a lot of players that are complaining about lack of content are beta and/or hardcore D&D players
And I appreciate it must be kinda frustrating for them.
But I'm not a very experienced D&D player so it's still very new to me.
Where as players who have had no previous experience will still be quite confounded by this game.
My point being had the devs implemented everything from D&D this game would be too much for new players to be able to come to terms with and therefore probably quit.
So they had to find a happy medium - did they get it right?
Well from having read most of this forum - I would say yes.
There seems to be as many players who love it as hate.
And a huge majority who like it but feel there are important changes that are needed.
And that's the beautiful thing.
The Devs will change/improve things on an on going basis

I am only lvl4 and no where near thru all the quests, so if they implement any new ones it'll make no difference to me, and I'm sure the majority of none beta players are in the same situation.

I totally agree with your point on collectables.
My ranger seems to get shurikens, darts, throwing axes and other useless items all the time whereas arrows are painfully rare.
To have the option on what I get would be wonderful.

1 important improvement needed, is the names colour change for party and guildies – but this has been posted many times.
So hopefully the Devs are working on it

[-Archangel-]

So they had to find a happy medium - did they get it right?
I don't think so. Adding craft skills and magic creation skills would not make any not D&D players leave same as those skills did not make anyone leave WoW.
And a huge majority who like it but feel there are important changes that are needed.
And that's the beautiful thing.
The Devs will change/improve things on an on going basis
I am one of those but I am also EVIL and will let all of you pay them monthly subscription until they fix this "gone retail 6 months too early" game. And that is when I plan on looking upon this game again to see if it is worth playing or if the players have all left.

[AngelOmnipotent]

I'd like to see Gems play a bigger part in the game than they are now. They're rare but all you can do with them is sell them.

maybe if not incorperating a crafting system, at least let mages craft a scroll of a spell they already know, using these components. Either that, or let Gems be used as a currency for a certain vendor, or even in the way collectables are used.

there are so many things in this game that there are no use for right now, there's a lot of room for extras.

[Huckster]

Angel
Noooo
no more collectables pleeeeze

[Satine]

Just so you know, I'm going to organise a better place for the suggestions as there are some great ideas and they do 'get lost' in this forum.

I'll do this when I have a chance to properly think about it.

[Kaju]

Please, a bank, where can put our cash in, I cannot understand such strict rules on encumber, due to many items, or Negitive spell cast on you (str) yet we can get around carrying the contents of the fort knox bank!

Right now my ranger, the poor girl is carrying around 5679pp 7546 gold 234 silver and a few copper!

By rights she should not be able to move at all with that amount.

Come one please let us bank our cash!

Danelle


Actually there is bank in the marketplace district :)


Kaju

[MaddoctoR]

I think that the biggest problem of the game was the beta :)
When i first started playing at the beta version everyone was trying to do all the quests in the game, and leveling was more fun and slow. Now a lot of people know which quest to do, they know where all the traps are, they know what kind of monsters they will face, they know everything! So level 1 players start with level 2 quests, they never play the simple level 1 ones because they are useless, what's the point of earning 20xp when u can get 5 more ppl and do a level 2 quest that will give you 1500 xp, most players start Shan-To-Kor at level 3 or even 2. When i was playing at the beta, and we reached Shan-To-Kor part 3 it took us ages to finish it, we didn't know what to do and how to pass from certain traps but now most beta players know it.

If you finish Waterworks you'll get to level 2, then Catacombs and you are level 3, then Shan-To-Kor and you are level 4 and so on.

Is it my idea or quests give the same reward regardless of your party size? XP should be lower for more than 1 person. That way people will try quests with less than 6 ppl and all quests will be more challenging. Not all quests are made for 6 ppl, some are for 2, or 3, or 4.

[Book]

Danelle was asking for a bank where we can store our lovely monies. Items can be stored in the Lords palace bank thingy. The name escapes me. We cannot store coins in it unfortunately. Having only 8 STR I too feel a little heavy everynow and again. After a spending spree things are fine for a dungeon or two.

Maybe Danelle should spend a little more on her favourites friends? ;)

[CultOfTheSix]

I did not play the Beta, Maddoctor. I started with the early starter. I agree that the first few weeks of every mmorpg are really crazy cause all the Beta 'veterans' running rampant and using their knowledge as an advantage. It will even out soon. My concerns are more on the general design flaws of the game that will become more and more aparent to you when you reach the mid levels.

I'd like to see Gems play a bigger part in the game than they are now. They're rare but all you can do with them is sell them.

maybe if not incorperating a crafting system, at least let mages craft a scroll of a spell they already know, using these components. Either that, or let Gems be used as a currency for a certain vendor, or even in the way collectables are used.

there are so many things in this game that there are no use for right now, there's a lot of room for extras.

Have to agree with you there. The whole game just feels unfinished. Maybe it is because we are used to more complex forms of trade and crafting. I like to think that it's just some random stuff the Monsters stashed, stolen from adventurers they ambushed and killed. I take as much as i can carry and dump it to a vendor for a quick buck. But then i don't know what to buy with my money cause there is nothing to buy at all and that makes me wonder why i bother with chests in the first place.

Its just in fact a matter of how people do play. If you start doing things like redwillow with lvl3/4 (lvl7 quest), cult of the six (lvl8-10quest) with lvl6 its no wonder that you run out of quests with lvl7. Actually we had in beta lvl9 players that did not repeat much quests. They mostly did all the mid level quests on the proper level (1-2 lvl before quest lvl), most of them on hard or elite again. If you go that way instead of just doing the "good xp" quests repeatable and just think "yeah lets do that high lvl quest its easy and we get 40% bonus xp due to lvl" it just works out well.

I was not talking about exploiting the obvious best quests like redwillow, stormcleave, gwynlands stand or Cot6. I was exactly talking about doing the normal Quests on all 3 dificulties. This gave me so much experience, i was outleveling them before i did them all. The BIG problem with this is that while the Quests get harder Mobs they are exactly the same by design and you know what's comming. There are no better rewards for doing them in medium or hard and that is not exactly motivating. It's a flaw in the design of the game. The other flaw is the Levels say nothing. Try to do the Level 4/5 defending Quests (market north, forgot the name) with your standard level 3/4 pick up group and you know what i mean.


Long term motivation:
The lack of content is really pretty concerning, I hope the powers that be can come up with some really good additional, free content.
Having lots of lvl 10s sitting around with nothing to do would be a shame.

In terms of Quests, there are enough for a release if they keep their promise to update every 30 days. The lack of content is that there is NOTHING else in this game to do at all. It's mind boggling, but if you don't have a group there is nothing you can do (except maybe explore a bit but that gets old pretty quick given the physical size of the 'world')

world design:
make it more variable, by randomly shifting traps, monster placement in the quests, give the NPCs something to do, not just wandering back and forth between 2 places. Everything feels just so static.
OTOH I really like the different designs for the same weapons.

I think, just like in the PnP you don't really want to play the same adventure more than 2-3 times. This is a real problem because as much as i can see that playing with a different class makes it a little bit different, it will get old after you re-rolled 3-4 times.

I love the weapons and armor designs aswell, alot of diversity!!!

economy:
IMO fine as it is, +1 items are available, everything else needs to be found & sold, this surely prevents all lvl10 characters of the same class looking like clones.
Regarding the price differences between buy/sell at the vendors, serves you right not to put some points into CHA & haggling
I've noticed way better prices i the harbor after completing WW and I'd expect the same for the house vendors.
Maybe we could make the NPC vendors sensitive to charm person / diplomacy / intimidate to a certain extent (DC 60 to get the full value for your next item you sell?)

It would be great if the game would encourage people to sell their found items to brokers. But right now the brokers are almost empty all the time and the added amount of gold you get does not compensate for the time it takes you to run to all the brokers while you're group is waiting for you to do the next Quest. Great idea in general but bad execution.

I am sure you agree that putting the already restricted amount of Points into Haggling and CHR is a waste if you are not a Bard. A charismatic Dwarven Barbarian just sounds wrong to me.

CHR affects the vendors to the extend of ~100g per level.

Thanks everyone for the constructive replies.

[CultOfTheSix]

Just so you know, I'm going to organise a better place for the suggestions as there are some great ideas and they do 'get lost' in this forum.

I'll do this when I have a chance to properly think about it.

Thank you Satine, I am pretty sure you got alot on your plate already. Looking forward to what you can come up with.

[Kaju]

A small note concerning Gems.
Gem's in D&D have very limited uses other than being sold for money.
Some powerful spells need them as components and sometimes players prefer them over carrying large ammounts of money, but for the most part they are just vendor food.


Kaju

[Duar Hini]

*Edit: I as I posted this I realized that the thread grew about a page as I wrote so I felt the urge to ad a little thingy at the end*

@CultoftheSix
Your 1st Post was truly great, I read through it and found exactly those points of DDO that were getting on my nerves too.

One point in which I disagree with you though is that the XP you get at lvls 1-4 is too much.
I sure see that you have many quests that you neednt do but thats a big plus you have at those lower lvls. I like to play more than one character and since many quests getannoying after the 3rd-5th time you do them its nice that you have a bit variety in choosing what quests you want to do (there could still be more content though).
The problem that lvling gets more and more grinding at higher lvls is, as I see it, caused by the lack of good quests on those lvls. I would be more than happy if I d take much longer to level on lvl in the later parts of the game if I am able to choose between more quests in different settings. Sure dungeons are an integral part but after you play your 100th Dungeon you feels more like you were a sewage worker instead of a hero. There could be arctic, desert ( with respective sand- and snowstorms) european climate woods, mountains and many more different climate/landscape settings.

The 2nd thing I wanted to say is that I dont understand, is why there is no crafting(apart from the reason that Turbine wasnt able to do it in time) and the artificers that go with it.
If I see crafting as well done as in "temple of elemental evil" I think of this as a big loss. You could even implement special components needed for the more potent enchantments, and this could lead to more intresting quests.
Artificers are, imho, the most important things that makes Eberon settings different from those other settings. They would work together nicely with the crafting and warforged would be playable at last. They were way too hard to be healed and buffed so far. And to those who will reply that those mages should just heal em, in the normal setting this was part of the strengths of an artificer and artificer and warforged were one hell of a team. Imho you cant do one without the other.

*Edit: Another way of making quests more difficult and challenging even if you played em before would be to include more random parts. I, for one, cant understand why all traps are at the same place. If I, as a DM, use traps, then I use them to hamper my PCs and to remind them to stay on their guard while exploring the dungeons. Those static traps totally miss this point though.*

I know most of those things were allready said in one fashion or another but I felt the need to point them out here.

[Darloc]

While I have a different opinion on lot of point from the OP, I do agree on some point. Action point for exemple is a great idea but not really well implemented. Not that it's damaging my gameplay, it always nice to have some sort of reward from time to time in term of power of your character. I didn't play to much in the beta (I sticked to the Harbor) and I play multi-class so I thought that it was allright not to be able to upgrade or find some enhancement for my char because I was multiclassing. But I now find that some of the AP are useless. For my level2 (I'm only lvl3, but I'm waiting for the french release to play with some friends), I picked one (warrior strenght) and left 3 action point unused. To bad.
I think the solution should be to either lower the reward and allow people to pick more than 4 or as you said being able to change them on the fly (maybe with some restriction to avoid people changing for each quest, like once every X hours).

For the economy I do agree it's a bite short like it is know, not that I would like to see some grind-economy put in but it would be nice to be able to sell some loot. The problem is that it's fairly close to the DnD economy, the price are the same as far as I know but you get so many reward you don't need, that you become rich quite quickly. So if a AH as in wow was put in place it would be easy to get your best gear and that would spoil some of the fun of getting a really cool item. I can undertstantd your frustration at not getting an item you want/need but the solution might be to be in a good guild and trade with your felow guildmate.

The quests, well I guess that a point were you are a bit to impatient, the game is only a week old (here at least) and Turbine allready stated the first content patch is in the pipe for the end of the month. It should solve the problem of the lvl7-10, puting more high level content. So my advice on this one: wait and see.

[RavenDeBlade]

i totally agree with this post, im lvl 8, almost 9 and getting bored already and finding the lack of content etc is disturbing.

[Satine]

Moving to the brand new suggestions forum :)

[Ilmathar]

@ the Quest repeating...
If you take any Q involved casters on elite or even hard (basicly all qs) then they start casting VERY destructive spells blinds curses and whatnot and compared to the +xp you gain for it its not worth it at all but i guess the point of doing this was to see how tough your party really is when it gets down to chinatown. glittering dust? EASY on the area effect mate, and the fact that they spam it insanely not once in a while but everybloody time and preferedly all over the area.
if you want to change this for peoply trying it more is getting them better rewards +3 minimal on elite, and then making the player choose between those rewards OR a class made item for you as +2 or something like that which should pop up before rewards were displayed. All depending on lvl Q on normal ofc. just a thought tho...