Announcement Ask the CMs in English

so when we reach level 50 we should quit? because there is nothing here for us?
they should think of end game users too.this is an mmorpg and not a single player game,but it feels like a single player game.(finished, next) i wish they would give me and a couple ppl here (you know who u r,) vip to help improve this brickwall they hit,being hard core gamers our input would be priceless.

 

Keeping customers happy requires more of a commitment. It also requires listening to what they like, don't like, what they want and don't want. It isn't nearly as easy as getting someone new to come in and spend a few bucks.

Of course it could be done, but the question is will it be done?

Just look at the 16 month quest for feedback of the moon events where every single suggestion was simply ignored with no explanation as to why. Granted you can't give customers every thing they want, but ignoring them isn't the best business decision in the long run.

Maybe they simply put all their effort into their new games.

 

simply said it is a group effort to defeat a boss or mobs,scaling only makes people want to go solo. u know?

 

Worst thing they ever did was make PW's accessible for noncapped players. PW should have been endgame content and the Ammons set as well as the other new items and difficulties made for level 50's. This should have been the content we had left once we got through the other maps. It would have motivated toons to reach cap and get the benefits of PW drops, instead all the other content is secondary because the drops in PW's are better with other better possible rewards.

 

But BigPapa, I was invited to the PW's before 159 and being a new player who has reached lv. 46 I can only last a short time there.
Heck I've only been playing for 4-5 months now. It's is very hard place to farm or in my case very easy place to die. And in a month or two i'll probably be lv. 50 and die almost as fast as now, that is, if I don't start getting better drops.

There are lv. 50's and there are old lv. 50's It is far too easy to lv. up that is if you work at it.

 

That is for the Asian version game only. They've already talked about that in a couple of places.

 

Hello, Haruki

With the new content expansion. the maximum level will be 55?

 

Ya, I'm talking about well before that when they allowed level 30's access. The Ammon's set was never desirable pre-expansion, so instead of making it desirable, they made it so that toons that might want the set could get it at level 30. They also of course gave leveling toons an alternative to doing main line quests to level their toons. Good idea on the surface, but bad in the long run. Even the new Ammon's stuff is in their own words; for developing toons. Which takes us back to the same problems they created pre-expansion.

Here's mostly why I said it was the biggest mistake. There is a development process for a character that moves in stages. It starts with a beginning toon just trying to figure out the game. They need tooltips and a safe few maps to learn the mechanics. Leveling toons need threats to increase and challenges to increase as their personal skills develop and toon gets stronger from more capabilities and better gear. Top level toons need the ability to improve their toons since leveling and additional attacks are gone. All of these stages are fine in the game and they have given quite a bit of attention to their development. Where they have completely lost the bubble is the last stage ENDGAME.

There has always been a severe lack of endgame content in DSO. HOD, Khally, Mortis, Destructor, and PVP was about all that was worth doing until the expansion. I personally began to hate doing these things as it was so repetitive. You could find other things to stay busy if you wanted, but most developed endgame toons just goofed around or did general farming till events came, then when went back to minimal play until the next event. Those endgamers that still participated heavily ended up in a rut of repetition, doing the same things over and over at the rare possibility they would find something that would improve their toons or the few mechanics of the game such as GOP would amass to a level to do an upgrade.

Then came the expansion. Some smart choices when they expanded were to offer improved drops for all PW's giving us more options than just HOD, giving us more bosses with useable drops, and a break from repetition with many options and elements. They finally had a chance to make an entire element of end game content (PW). Lets face it, no matter how beautiful and creative the Lor' Tac' maps were, they did not have any attractive reason to repeat farm them once you leveled past the map. This was also a missed opportunity. PW's were an answer to endgame content.

That was at least till they self-sabotaged. "Hey! since we have these frag thingies maybe we should remove the places they can use them. After all, we don't want players to be able to just put in a certain amount of time and get rewarded with a unique of their choice. It should be much more random than that." I can't believe this was an intentional decision. Come on someone screwed up just admit it and fix it. Incredibly shortsighted choice. "Oh I know, since the gear ain't that good, lets let the toons that might want it be able to get it instead of making it worth pursuing for everyone." Result: lack of endgame content.

 

Your analysis is excellent, but I can believe it was intentional.
BigPoint makes simple games that exchange players' time for BigPoint revenues. That's their business model, down to not having enough trained staff to do a complex job right. DSO makes money from cheap product, and that makes everyone there a little nuts.
I do think some of the middle managers are trying to do the best they can with what they are allowed to do. Still, a terrible production schedule, constant design flaws, and incredulous quality issues can only persist when upper corporate management makes it that way.

Maybe they will make Peace with their customers soon. Here's hoping.
Merry Christmas.

 

About the endgame content.
I dont think current PW are open-ended. What if they decide to pit Lor' Tac as PW dungeons in the next expansion? Where would the entrance gates be? Obviously they have to extend the current hub, which could be avoided with some more thinking. Anyways not a big deal.

One major question I have is why the champion mobs are not random spawn. Once you find a champion in say Nahuatlan, you can constantly farm it, cycling between the few champion mobs you found, feeding yourself with pink junk. This might be good for some but it's still a side result from bad design.
Instead why not make them random? Make players farm mobs and from time to time to find some champions. Especially in PW this would be totally awesome because when I enter a map I know exactly where the champions are.
Other games made them random to add to the non-repetetive factor.
To clarify, when you enter a map, you know what awaits you there. You know that at the next corner is a champion mob waiting. Make them to appear out of nowhere, unexpectedly facing a champion mob, some lucky times even a two, adding to even a bigger challenge.
With time when they add more champion enchantment, the randomness will get even bigger and thus a map, even the same map, wont be boring because you have no idea what mobs are inside.
This applies not only to random enchantment, but to random mob type.
So you enter the same, but never the same fight.

 

I agree, it does appear to be an intentional act on their part.

 

New PW is interesting only on paper atm: main problem of this expansion to me is that the medium and the hard difficulty are still not worth the efforts and the costs.

In the easy difficulty, people can kill mini-boss and get an extraordinary item in a couple of hits... Why should people leave that difficulty, to go in the hard and tripling the efforts and still getting only the extraordinary?

Of course there is the chance to drop better values in items bonus (interesting mostly on leg items) and i noticed that it works fine on numeric bonuses; but percentage bonuses are still a joke (founded a bow from Heredur hard with three vel%: 6.1/10.4/8... hilarious... between Heredur and Grimmag i've founded at least 20 bows, and just one time i founded a dmg% >35%): i've done a little less than a hundred Heredur in maximum difficulty; most of the time it drops 1 leg, 2 pink, 1or2 flawed gems and it takes from 500 to 800 red ess. It's not worth the trouble, cause before to get there u have also to do two maps (another insane choice by developers)...

I mean is it so hard to set as basic drop in the hardest difficulty from minibosses an extraordinary and a flawed gem or at least the old droprate from HoD Kinghts? Is not that free player will become full royal anyway... Is it so hard to set as random drop for example 3x realm frags or 3x pots in this modality? How is it now, imho is not fulfilling at all: i understand that it needs to be a difficulty where you have to spend resources (money) to farm, and i'm ok with that; but at the moment farming there is worthless.

Second problem, related to first: Gems drop rate is gone for good even in the hardest mod comparing to the old days in the HoD.

Third (as BigPapa was saying): what am i supposed to do with materi fragments? At the moment i'm buying Ammon set and melting it, over and over...

And now some questions for the CM:
-Is the feature that allows us to remove GoP from items without melting them still on the table?
-Is the feature that allows us to craft more selectively the items still on the table?
Cause they seems to be "forgotten" in the last couples of Twitch sessions, and that's not good at all...

 

Hey there everyone,

first of all, I need to apologize for the lack of CM presence in this thread but these last days were rather hectic and kept me away from answering here. Jumping in now to confirm that I will go today through the last pages of comments and provide tomorrow with as many detailed answers as possible to those - please bear with me and hold your spears. Or maybe do not hold them - just keep them constructive in their edges.

Thanks and see you tomorrow!

 

It seems that with some of the more recent releases (like expanding pw to lvl 10) that DSO is encouraging players to create a twink. So with all the so called "balancing" that is being thrown around, will DSO ever address the twink issue which certainly effects pvp to a large degree?

 

Hi CM,

After 159, low level bosses (Arancha, bear,Heredur) are not dropping their specific unique for some of the players. Could you confirm that low level bosses are dropping their specific unique items? Thanks.

 

https://board-en.drakensang.com/threads/specific-boss-unique.70152/#post-639858

 

You announced in twitch that with the next Defeat the Undefeatables event, there would be a new "Boss" pet to gain, which is nice.

But 2 of my chars had extremely bad drop luck with the Heredur puppet and have been keeping 3 parts of it in their inventory for ages now.
In case those parts can't be won from Circus Monstrorum in "normal" difficulty any more, it would be very nice if you could make them available from Gnob!

Edit: Thanks for the answer on twitch, no further reply required here...
For everyone else interested: Referring to R160 on the test server, the Heredur puppet will be available from Gnob for 6000 Draken , or 1500 for any of the four parts. Thank you!

Ceterum censeo... please do comment on this lifekeeper issue.

 

DSO (BigPoint) got a prize for best browser game in 2015 from a German group. It was for the Rise of Balor.
Amazing. Did they play the same game we get in Tegan and Agathon? Was it by popular vote?

 

Won a race with no competitors. None of them played trough endgame, or stick long enough to get a good feeling of how progression goes in this game.
Best graphics in the browser is a more suitable tittle.
If DSO decides to pull non-browser game, their company will die.

 

Haruki, if you ever decide to read this or even reply, please take this one as a disclaimer. I love this game and I've been with the game for 4 years. Invested tons of time and I'm addicted. I could have started another game instead buy I stick to DSO.

By writing what is below, I'm not looking for an answer like the following 'they didn't have enough time for this or that (new moon for instance)'. That kind of reply would be reasonable if we talk about one specific mess-up. I know there are bugs, I know there are schedule shifts, I know there is pressure of budget, timing, management, marketing, account managers etc. Fair, that creates the noise in the Dev process which impacts the outputs, the scope and the quality. Fair. That said, Quality still has to be the king, you cannot negotiate and compromise on Quality. There is a beautiful development term, called Technical Debt. Invented by one of the Agile Manifesto signers Mr. Cunningham. So there is too much technical debt in the game, and the team has to stop and pay it off. Fair amount of automated testing would also be a huge positive. Coupling Dev and QA has to be done, they should sit together before the feature(user story) is started and decide on the testing strategy, what would be tested on the dev level, what by test automation, what by manual QA/QC. You cannot have QA disconnected from the dev, but it does look like so now. The quality is not there, and it doesn't look like it is improving. Do you track the quality metrics? What is the defect kill rate? What are the dynamics of defect arrival? What is the post qa defect arrival rate? It is not improving, trust me. Dev can lie, but the product cant. I don't see the code, but I could have guessed few more defects about the design of the instances that your guys missed. Even after today's fix.

So the quality first. Even if that means no features for the next two releases, players will thank you later.

And the paradigm. As I said, new moon 'success' is not the root cause. This one could be due to a lack of time, true, fair. But overall, all of them are like that. All events, all updates. The paradigm is 'more and more grinding'. You know that RPG games are supposed to be a little boring, right? List year DSO was a king, it was one of the most boring game on the market already, and since r155 you decided to make it even more boring. To take off the remains of fun. To take more and more of our time. That true about every decision - pw, new moon, full moon, Christmas event etc. I'm sure the Defeat event will follow the paradigm.

So, to sum it up, I'm not looking for the answer on the specific matter. Im not even looking for an answer at all. Please rather spend that assumed time to well-shape the message to the dev that there is a community over there that wants a little bit less grind, a little bit less time requirement during the weekends or event days. You cannot monetize on ppl health, even accepting addiction. Please, change that freaking paradigm. Baby steps. Otherwise, you will see more and more of below and the kind.

Dear Team,

Congratulations with another epic success, the Full Moon rework. It is still too early into event, but the votes on on eof the forums are crystal, 0 - 15 (Upd 0-25) (Upd 2-37) on the question 'do you like the new version). That is clearly a new record. Go team!

Thank you again for incorporating our feedback! It surely was unfair that the new moon was much much longer and it was reported here multiple time. As you took that into accout, and addressed by adding immunity to the miniwolfs, full moon complexity will be now on par with the new moon boredom. It will be fair now, as full moon way was clearly way too fast to get the drakens.

Thanks again, way to go team!

....

Dear team, thank you for final fix of the Winter event. Now, with no relog, less players would be able to complete the big presence. Less fair players, as all those who wanted did know you are going to fix it and got the present during the second mini-event. Thank you for making the message crystal clear to everyone - 'abuse, abuse, abuse, because everyone else would, with no punishment, and you would be silly not too'.

Kudos and respect to few of the fair folks, you deserve 2 gifts for the amount.

...

Haruki. People are getting sick of the game and the things your Dev team does, with all the decisions. With all the respect to you, the Dev team and product owners taken the wrong way. They are constantly making already boring game even more boring.

First you took the m2 map reset off, so we should take a minute of our life to run through the junk m1 every time.

You took off the boss map reset, so we should again work hard to get to the boss, and it is also double sad as the maps and the bosses often require different setups to be effective. You also managed to make the bosses super boring, by giving them crazy amount HP, it's like we were not bored enough by just getting there.

After that you are killing the new moon, making one of the most boring and least rewarding event even more boring and less rewarding. 14%-86% on one of the forum. Worst results I have seen ever, until... scroll below.

Than you invent the new Christmas event, that supposed to be a relaxing Holiday stuff, you require us spend all the (Chrystmas!!!) weekends in this boredom of fighting for coins. Combined with the Mario-Arcade Iike shoting heads boredom. If I wanted to play arcade game, I would do it.

Then you finally kill the full moon, the only not-that-much boring event. 0%-100% people vote against. You have reached the bottom line.

On the other side, you are giving Asians the AFK bot. You are sick guys (not you personally, I know your role is tough and you have to defend them, but trust me they do not deserve that. Your social skills are much much higher than their game design skills). And not a lot of people want to share that sickness with you, despite addiction. Don't kill the game noobs. Not sure who is the current vendor, what outsourcing country it is, but the quality is not there. Quality sucks real hard. You don't see it?.. and the game designer desicions suck even harder. (Kudos to the Graphic folks, the only guys who do their job right).

And finally the new Quake PVP Arena. If I wanted to play Quake, I would download and play Quake.

No need for your another 'chill out reply'. Tell your devs and designers to 'chill out', and start thinking until it is not too late.

I would actually add another thing you (dev/game design) guys are missing, the fundamental concept of holistically addressing things. looks like you do not trace what would new feature impact. you change something, and it creates issues with something else. The original author, developer, spend some time thinking on the design and came up with the design. You change some flavor of it, forgetting about other aspects included in original design. It could be seen throughout the entire game, every feature of the game. Few examples:/
1. The original developer thought people do not deserve to farm Mortis on a constant basis, and he thought an ability to fight Mortis should be deserved. So he invented coins, that do the work. Recently, you have added another thing of the same kind - need to run through the m1 and m2 again. But you didnt took coin-requirement off. Now the user pays double price.
2. You are changing the coins value, but you do not compensate those who have lots of them. I have had 1.5k coins at least. so you addressed one aspect, but forgot about the other.
3. You are changing the lifekeeper, but instead of full refund and ability to purchase it back for the same, fair to everyone, amount of 6k drakens, you let some people enjoy it for 1.5k while others have to pay 6k, and you also punish those who don't want it anymore, by taking their 1.5k drakens as a 'rent' pay. again, not a holistic fix.
4. You invent craft-able items, but do not think about inventory to keep all those items. set of untouchables, are you kidding? keeping 6 items, and than if you go 1 by 1, you will need 3 slots for T2, 3 slots for T1 wasted until you could actually get the final piece and craft the T3 item. Assuming you are doing only 1 map all the time. If you ever decide to go other map, you will need to keep even more waste in the inventory. And it wasn't like that at the beginning, as you were able to keep tons of currency and then buy it all at once and craft. another half-a-fix. You know what most people did - trashed it the next moment they got it.
5. You improving the values for the legendaries, but you forget about things like Ring of Death. It is now useless even with the max stats, thanks to Critical Damage being low. Good legendary items beat it.
6. You are fixing the low-level-critical-hit items (r139), but do not address what is already there.
7. You raise the blackborg entry price today, but promise the better real fragment drops sometime later.
8. You invent tons of new sets, that are nothing but completely useless. Why not spend some time, create less, but better quality, so people really have what to fight for.

etc etc etc. I know that some dev will say 'will do it later'. But that later will never happen, as the best timing to address something related to a Feature A is the time you work on the Feature A. Otherwise, the remains of the feature will be lost below with yellow-release line of the product backlog, like it is with LowLvlBugItems. hope you get the idea.

with all the respect,
Seb

Just in case, old heredur pet doesn't work with new Q bosses (tested on teddy and heredur). Perhaps the new pet is the way they are going to fix it)

The only thing is that calling DSO a browser game is cheating. It was never a browser game. It is not written on the canvas. It is not a java script game, not even flash or some dumb plugin game. It is WinAPI application, embedded into a browser with ActiveX windows measures. It is being downloaded and takes 1gb of space. Not even saying most of the browsers droped support of the java and other plug-ins like that. Even quake can be incorporate into a browser. It wouldn't become a browser game tho'.