Dungeons and Dragons Online - Fair Codexia Dead - DDO NEWs Thread!

[Zurat-Yarkuch]

Time to get some stuff.

You can earn DDO points through favour from completing quests and get enough to get the expansions there. If your limited in points or time I recommend in order of importance Ravenloft/Sharn/Menace/Shadowfell.

This is a really good deal. I recommend everyone take advantage of this.

 

[PapaPetro]

Interesting. Even though they said that free quest coupon giveaways cost them a bunch of money they are doing it again.

Probably want returning players to get hooked again and buy the latest Dino Island expansion at retail price.
Sadly, pretty much everyone that will play this game probably has at this point.
It's a great game, it's just how do you get the latest kids interested in a 3.5e D&D game from 16 years ago?

 

[Zurat-Yarkuch]

Probably want returning players to get hooked again and buy the latest Dino Island expansion at retail price.
Sadly, pretty much everyone that will play this game probably has at this point.
It's a great game, it's just how do you get the latest kids interested in a 3.5e D&D game from 16 years ago?

I discovered this game 13 years after it came out. There probably still are people who would be interested in this or players who did play years ago and want to give it a try again.

Also, just discovered the panel video they did at PAX

Spoiler

Team seems very nice and friendly. Honestly I love all three pitches for quests they did. Would be fun if they did all three as an adventure pack. Also, you can vote for which quest you want here.

 

[PapaPetro]

Probably want returning players to get hooked again and buy the latest Dino Island expansion at retail price.
Sadly, pretty much everyone that will play this game probably has at this point.
It's a great game, it's just how do you get the latest kids interested in a 3.5e D&D game from 16 years ago?

I discovered this game 13 years after it came out. There probably still are people who would be interested in this or players who did play years ago and want to give it a try again.

Also, just discovered the panel video they did at PAX

Spoiler

Team seems very nice and friendly. Honestly I love all three pitches for quests they did. Would be fun if they did all three as an adventure pack. Also, you can vote for which quest you want here.

Hey that's great. How did you come about discovering it?

 

[Zurat-Yarkuch]

Hey that's great. How did you come about discovering it?

Back in 2011 or 2012 I took a quick peak at the game when the menace of the underdark expansion came out. I remember stopping in Korthos cause I couldn't afford a cleric hireling and I thought you needed to pay points (aka real money) to get gold seal hires to solo the game. I probably was misunderstanding stuff, plus I honestly hated MMOs back then.

In 2019 I think I somehow discovered Strimtom's Youtube build videos. I loved the Neverwinter Nights games so 3rd edition in videogame format was familiar to me and this seemed to be more of it. Got into the game, joined a bad guild that soured my experience with the game. Left the guild and the game. Then hopped back onto the game when they released the first free quest coupon in 2020.

Was going to just solo the game on my own. Found a guy recruiting for his guild in 2021. Explained how I just wanted to solo. He said that was cool and joined his guild. We ended up playing together and decided to start fresh new characters. We now co-op play the game together at times it is convenient for us. So far we are on our third life and though we started on elite we are now running Reaper 3 difficulty.

I play solo on an alt character as well, but playing with someone else is just a ton of fun. This game is really special. There is nothing else quite like it.

 

[PapaPetro]

Hey that's great. How did you come about discovering it?

Back in 2011 or 2012 I took a quick peak at the game when the menace of the underdark expansion came out. I remember stopping in Korthos cause I couldn't afford a cleric hireling and I thought you needed to pay points (aka real money) to get gold seal hires to solo the game. I probably was misunderstanding stuff, plus I honestly hated MMOs back then.

In 2019 I think I somehow discovered Strimtom's Youtube build videos. I loved the Neverwinter Nights games so 3rd edition in videogame format was familiar to me and this seemed to be more of it. Got into the game, joined a bad guild that soured my experience with the game. Left the guild and the game. Then hopped back onto the game when they released the first free quest coupon in 2020.

Was going to just solo the game on my own. Found a guy recruiting for his guild in 2021. Explained how I just wanted to solo. He said that was cool and joined his guild. We ended up playing together and decided to start fresh new characters. We now co-op play the game together at times it is convenient for us. So far we are on our third life and though we started on elite we are now running Reaper 3 difficulty.

I play solo on an alt character as well, but playing with someone else is just a ton of fun. This game is really special. There is nothing else quite like it.

Awesome story, thanks for telling it. Yeah it's a real special game, I remember getting a box copy when it first came out as Stormreach (back when Curses were permanent till lifted). Jumped back 'n forth over the years, sometimes with fresh starts on new servers to relive some of the old stuff without the twink gear (Harbor quests never get old for some reason).

The game's Reincarnation system really shines at bringing those High-level vets together with new guys into the loop; it's great getting shown the ropes and powering through Reaper content early. I wish other game designers would implement a similar TR system where the players don't inevitably all just get stuck in Endgame.

 

[lukaszek]

bringing those High-level vets together with new guys into the loop

lol, no. They just zerg solo

 

[PapaPetro]

bringing those High-level vets together with new guys into the loop

lol, no. They just zerg solo

If you had buds, you wouldn't treat them like pugs.

 

[Reinhardt]

gud. skipped sharn before and bought later expansions especially in hope it will happens one day.

 

[Zurat-Yarkuch]

gud. skipped sharn before and bought later expansions especially in hope it will happens one day.

Sharn has a ton of great items and sets too. I personally use the Guardian of the Gates set with Saltmarsh legendary items for my tank.

I really enjoy the quests too. The whole steampunk setting is interesting to see in D&D.

 

[Lhynn]

Game needs to be remade recycling assets. New netcode, new animations, new character system, improved meshes.

I realize thats probably impossible, and that once this game lives out its last days SSG will probably disband, but I firmly believe it could be a lot more successful if the gameplay was brought up to 2010s standards.

 

[Reinhardt]

2010s had standards?

 

[deama]

I didn't start playing the game until 2020 even though I was playing baldur's gate and neverwinter back before 2010s.

I did know about the game for a long time, and have tried to get into it multiple times. First class I tried was a typical warrior, stopped at lvl 4, didn't like.
Seconnd attempt was a bard, wasn't too bad, but stopped at about lvl 7/8.
Third attempt was a barbarian, wasn't too bad, but stopped at about lvl 7.

I eventually bit the bullet and bought a monk. I typically love playing monks in RPGs, I always play monks, and when I did play a monk I enjoyed it a good amount, though I still stopped, at around lvl 16, took me a while to get there since I was doing it the first time and then was doing some item grinding etc...

I then later came back again, another monk, but this time started playing with a friend and managed to make it all the way to the lvl cap of 32 at the time.
I then realised that this type of game is best played with a friend, or friends.

I really wish they would remake it though, the net code is a bit crap.

And also, what about these AI stuff? Could they not incoporate some of it into quest voice acting for some more mundane quests? I bet that would save them a decent amount of $$$.

 

[Nim]

https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showt...tic-Impunity?p=6579698&viewfull=1#post6579698

As we were updating Diplomatic Impunity for u59 and needed to update all of the monsters anyway, we decided to move forward with replacing the Wildmen in this dungeon. We have not yet replaced Wildmen in other parts of the game, but we intend to do so in the future. DDO's Wildmen enemies are problematic on several levels, and while this could and probably should have been taken care of years ago, we're replacing them now that we have an opportunity to re-focus on this content.

We cannot have a discussion on these forums about the wider cultural attacks, harassment, oppression and fighting taking place in the US and elsewhere, and it will not be permitted as it relates to our decision to change monsters in our game, either. Any further discussion about "woke culture", which is a clear political debate, will not and never be permitted on these forums. This is your final warning.

You are welcome to provide your feedback as long as it does not touch the wider political fight currently happening. This change is being made because we want to, not due to any appeasement effort.

I made a huge error on the LOTRO side by allowing such discussion related to a television show and I will not repeat that mistake here.

Lol.

 

[Reinhardt]

replacing wildmen who actually CAN be reasoned with in this mission but leaving orkz who are enemies...

 

[Zurat-Yarkuch]

Jesus christ. This stupid shit is entering the game now? For fucks sake. If this goes the way of World of Warcraft I'm going to quit.

 

[Nim]

Jesus christ. This stupid shit is entering the game now? For fucks sake. If this goes the way of World of Warcraft I'm going to quit.

Just wait, they'll remove the vistani next. Those are oh so problematic too.

 

[Frank Capicoli]

As we all know wizards of the coast is infested with this bs but I was hoping at least SSG would have some resistance to it.

 

[Reinhardt]

i see Hoaxmetal logged yesterday. probably hoped to steal codexia back. thank you, i'm banking sagas to turn them all before reincarnation so your contribution is appreciated.

 

[lukaszek]

i see @Hoaxmetal logged yesterday. probably hoped to steal codexia back

do you have alerts on your phone to log into specific accounts?

 

[Reinhardt]

i see @Hoaxmetal logged yesterday. probably hoped to steal codexia back

do you have alerts on your phone to log into specific accounts?

nah, i'm just playing it semi-regularly

 

[lukaszek]

my bad, meant to target it at Hoaxmetal who is hoarding codex guilds

 

[Zurat-Yarkuch]

In the Lamannia Update 59 Preview Thread, one of the developers CodogCuisinart made a post explaining why lag is a problem now and some insight into how the original system was set up in 2006.

Spoiler

Without giving too much detail, know that Turbine developed two proprietary script languages to help abstract the multiplayer aspects of the game and solve synchronization and messaging requirements for massively multiplayer games. Having done so, a lot of modern approaches to performance profiling fall a little flat because they come down to an inconvenient fact that the game code is written almost entirely in these two proprietary languages and the last call on the stack ends up being the call into the VM. Over the last two years, we've developed profiling and analysis tools to aid us in diagnosis and fixing problems.

That being said, knowing about a problem and coming up with workable solutions can be challenging. The era under which these games were developed is VERY different from a hardware topology standpoint. These were developed during the times of single processor servers prior to broadband and when servers were not virtualized.Turbine invented its own form of compute cloud, storage solutions, and game engine. Some architectural decisions were made to minimize memory requirements because memory was rather limited and expensive which tends toward more CPU intensive solutions. Another thing to keep in mind is that post launch the game took directions that original team could never have foreseen and therefore wrote algorithms and made architectural decisions that can be a challenge given where we are now.

An example of this is can be illustrated with feats in the game. When I asked for a specification on feats for the game during early development, the design lead at the time handed me a copy of the 3.5 edition players handbook and said "This is your specification!" Cool! That's less than 100 feats and most of those are specializations and masteries. At the time, network speeds were not as fast as they are now and serializing a player across a server boundary was considered very expensive, so we jumped through hoops to compress information on the player. We were operating under the impression that like other MMOs we would have cross server boundary combat akin to WoW and LOTRO. (This was prior to deciding upon the instanced model of content that DDO later adopted.) Some algorithms literally walk through every possible feat in the game with a certain category and check if you have that bit set which at launch was a quite small number. We did not envision a design team solving the problem of advancement at a less macro level by using feats as the workhorse they have become. Initially, those small iterative pathways were not a performance issue and no one batted an eye at that n squared algorithm. We had some coding standards to keep certain pathways from crossing to keep it from becoming a performance issue like "feats don't modify effect properties" and "effects don't modify feat properties". So that feats could cache their bonuses and not have to be re-calculated except on logon and advancement. At some point, one of the developers fixed a bug where feats and effects weren't stacking per the player's handbook crossing that stream because nobody was left from the original combat team to stop them. So then every time an effect touched one of these properties, it had to rebuild this value iterating over all the possible feats that could touch it. An n squared algorithm became n cubed. At the time, it wasn't that big of a performance hit because we didn't have 485 refreshed bonus properties and 7000+ potential feats. LOL... just gave too much detail.

So this fix is very much a fix fighting against the very architecture under which the feat system was designed. This is just one example... performance on projects this massive isn't just one big issue. I always say performance on these projects is death by a million paper cuts and only through steady applied pressure and paying our technical debts by carefully changing what is prudent and testable, we can improve performance. This change has been a long time coming with a lot of different rounds of testing and finding a lot of peculiar and stumping problems along the way. This change has been silently tried on Lamannia a few times running the new code in tandem with the old code and cross checking the results to find errors. This time, we felt like we are getting close enough to release with it and decided to turn off the old code pathways and see what issues popped up.

I'm super grateful for the fans that have kept this franchise going and we aspire to be worthy of your patience and loyalty to this product. I hope this change is successful and brings greater joy to gameplay. We are painfully aware that there is a long way to go when it comes to performance fixes on the client and server and we have to balance that against new feature development and tech rot associated with tools and technologies written 15 years ago. I hope this explanation is somewhat illuminating and I would kindly ask that those in the community not assign incompetence or malfeasance to the developers at SSG. There are many of us who were there in the early years who have come back and a lot of new faces. Everyone here really cares about the products and we really care about our players and the longevity of the franchise. We are human and make mistakes. Games like this have a burden of legacy systems and data that sometimes make it hard to anticipate the halo of changes when they are made.

I don't tend to surface often because I'm hella busy and when I worked for the games previously I spent a little too much time on the forums and got myself in trouble with work/life balance. It is nice that somebody remembered me from my "Doghouse" thread days. We still have the castle bed and four more children have enjoyed it since that time. I have really good memories of having such a collaborative working relationship with the fans of the game. I'll try to surface more often so long as we can keep the vibe constructive. However, I must say that you, my boss, and coworkers would rather me spend my time working on the game than chatting on the forums.

Best wishes!

It's kind of fascinating to see how the original algorithms for 3.5 rules and feats ended up becoming a problem once they started adding so many additional effects and feats for player power and progression. I would honestly have loved to see how the game played back at the start in the first few years when they were following the 3.5 rules more closely.

 

[deama]

Too bad he didn't mention why they aren't trying to redo the game in a modern engine.
I understand some of these guys have devoted their entire lives into a single specific type of language/engine, but at this rate, I don't think they can reasonably continue with smashing their heads against it.

I don't expect them to remake the whole game in unreal engine with top of the line graphics with RTX, it would be perfectly reasonable for them to port over the same models and not really do many changes barring some basic/quick lighting changes.

They're investing a lot of time and money on a dead technology that may break if they update their kernel for christ sake.

 

[Nim]

Too bad he didn't mention why they aren't trying to redo the game in a modern engine.

Because it's a tranny led dev team with the competence of a squirrel ?