Dungeons & Dragons Online Forum News (Mar. 13, 05)

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Here are today's Dungeons & Dragons Online forum highlights, collected from Dungeons & Dragons Online forums. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Nik Davidson, Administrator

Voiced Macro's

These are all good ideas, I'd be curious to hear more about which sorts of implementations you enjoyed versus those you found less useful. For me, I found the "nested menu" chat commands in Tribes to be very handy, while Diablo II's "voice macros" were next to useless for me. Any other specific implementations to consider?

Give me some Warforged naming examples

Warforged names can be a lot of fun. Consider that most of the time they are choosing their own name; in the midst of war, they were often only given enough designation to recieve orders. For our part, we use a lot of simple, descriptive nouns - concepts that a warforged can attach an identity to. Hilt and Pommel are great examples. The names define them as part of a greater weapon, which is their purpose as close associates of the Lord of Blades.

The numeric designations in my mind should be the exception. While some warforged are content with such mundane descriptions, these are beings with freewill and most will desire something more for themselves. The treaty of Thronehold freed all the warforged, so while some of them chose to remain with their former owners, they did so as employees - their names are still their own to choose.

Imagine that you have all the mental capacity and knowledge that you do today, but no more than three to five years of memory. No real family or society, just self-awareness and emotions without context. What name would you choose for yourself?

The Turbine Restructuring and what it means for Retail

Atari's role hasn't changed, they're still our publisher and distributor for D&D Online.

Party level caps

This will likely be the case, though we haven't finalized just how wide a range we will be allowing.

Call me GRUMPY LOUD Rampart!

The game is pre-beta. We're releasing what information we can. We'll release more information as it is made available. That's all there is to it.

The Turbine Restructuring and what it means for Retail

Any displayed release date that is more specific than "second half of 2005" is guesswork. It's common practice for online retailers to announce preorders well before they have any firm release date (or preorder deal with the publisher, for that matter.)

No housing for release

You will definitely have some advanced storage options, it just won't come in the form of housing.

Is it just me or... (site going down?)

According to our logs, the site's been smooth sailing.

Bug Reporting Tools

As long as you file a bug detailing exactly what's up, nobody's going to get kicked from a beta for "exploiting," that would sort of defeat the purpose of beta. If, however, you file the bug, we start working on it, and we ask you to please quit doing that in the meantime since it sort of crashes this thing called a server, and you don't, well, then we'd kick that person from the beta for a totally different reason.

Xundau, Community Relations

Hmm Nik, what about we just add resting?

PnP D&D has indeed been played for 30 years now, and I agree that it's a pretty balanced system, especially 3.5e (it's far from perfectly balanced though -- check out this thread on the WotC forums for a fun example!)

That being said, as Revinor points out, we're not a PnP game -- there's no DM, we're using real-time combat, the pace of the game will be much faster than in PnP, etc. -- and this means that we can't automatically assume that a rule that's balanced in 3.5e will be balanced in DDO. Rest assured, as we convert individual chunks of the rules, we're preserving them where possible -- we always start with 3.5e as our baseline. But as David's (not Nik's) article details, we often find that the rules need to be tweaked or even drastically changed -- as was the case with spellpoints -- in order to work in DDO.

As far as regeneration goes, I doubt we're going to do this. One thing we specifically want to avoid is forced downtime. We play plenty of MMOs over here, and none of us is very fond of sitting around for five minutes waiting for our hitpoints and mana to regen. When you find a place to rest in DDO, you'll be able to refresh yourselves very quickly -- the flipside to this is that you won't be able to rest wherever you want.

Real difference between NWN and this game ?

To address the original post:


Quote:
Originally Posted by Revinor
Different (better) 3d engine and arts/models. So we have NWN on steroids. For just that, we can wait for NWN2.

Our graphics will be much, much better than NWN's -- I thoroughly enjoyed that game, but its graphics were somewhat dated IMO even when it was released, and that was in 2002.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Revinor
Massive as opposed to 96 players max. Problem is that you will spend 95% of the time in small groups anyway. And in NWN this max is per server - so you can easily cluster few servers and leave this limitation to per zone max instead of per game world (I don't see a possibility of having more than 96 players in single marketplace at once as a major selling point)

NWN has some pretty impressive home-brewed persistent worlds, but the fact of the matter is that they're home-brewed -- the servers can go down at a moment's notice due to the admin getting bored/needing the machines for something else/having their ISP bill get too high, etc.

DDO will be a true MMORPG -- it can only be played on centralized, secure, official servers (our current target is for around 1000 players per server during peak concurrency), and the game will be maintained and updated by a dedicated live team.

Instanced dungeons. This is first real difference for me - in NWN, maps are static (monster can be made dynamic). In DDO, dunegons will be generated randomly, thus providing a bit more variety. In NWN, you would have to create 50-60 static areas and swap between them...

Actuallly, we aren't using truly random dungeons, because we've never seen a random dungeon generator that can create anything that looks and and plays as good as a hand-built dungeon. Our level designers meticulously plan out each of their dungeons, mapping them out on graph paper (with detailed notes) before they even start building them in our world builder application. (If you're worried about having enough content, don't be -- we have a huge design team, a ton of dungeons planned or already built, and many of our dungeons will have several different quests associated with them. Coupled with regular content updates, there will be more than enough content to go around.)

Within each dungeon, there may be some randomization -- the location of treasure and quest objectives, encounters, traps, and other dungeon elements can change each time a party goes into a dungeon (the actual degree of randomization will vary from dungeon to dungeon). But we're shying away from truly random dungeons like those in Anarchy Online or City of Heroes because, despite the merits of those games, we've found that their dungeons start to feel repetitive and stale pretty quickly ("Another burned-out office building? I swear I haven't been here before, but it feels strangely familiar.")

See my answer to your last question...

NWN is pretty darn close to D&D 3.0, with a few noteable exceptions such as being able to rest just about anywhere.

DDO is using D&D 3.5 as a baseline, and preserving the rules where possible, but we are indeed making some major changes to accomodate the real-time MMORPG format -- the recent change from spell memorization to spellpoints is a good example.

I should note though, that our main game systems guy (David Eckelberry) is a WotC alumnus who worked on both 3.0 and 3.5 D&D. We're also working very closely with Wizards themselves to ensure that our adaptation of the rules makes sense, and even more importantly, that we carry over the spirit and feeling of D&D.

The bottom line is this -- NWN is a very flexible product. It can be used to create extensive single-player campaigns, campaigns designed for a DM and a small group of players, or persistent worlds that approach the scale and complexity of commercial MMORPGs. It can do all of these things well, or even great, depending on the talent of the people doing the work.

DDO, on the other hand, is being built as a big-budget, fully-fledged MMORPG from the ground up. The rules, gameplay, combat, spell system, etc. are all being adapted and/or built with MMORPG gameplay in mind.

While there are some similarities between NWN and DDO in that they're both D&D products that are (or at least can be) played online, in reality they are two very different products that each have their place in the D&D universe. Personally, I'll be playing DDO a long time after its release, but I'll probably be picking up NWN 2 when it comes out as well.

How long is "Very Soon" to you

Nik and I agitate the rest of the dev team on a daily basis (actually, usually several times a day) for screenshots and the beta signup site. But the dev team's been working at full-tilt for several weeks now -- basically since the beginning of the year -- in order to get the game ready for beta, and as a result Nik and I (and the community in general) haven't been getting a lot of love lately.

At this point, it's almost a scripted conversation:

The good news is that we're still on track to get to beta when we want to (which, of course, is "soon"). The not-so-good news is that we've been slower than anticipated in getting you new screenshots and getting beta signups up and running.

Honestly, if I'd been forced to give you a date back in early January, I would have said that we'd have new screenshots and beta signups by the end of February. But schedules and priorities change, and this is the main reason why we say "soon" instead of "end of February" -- we don't want to give exact dates until we're sure we can make them.

Still, we're a lot closer to getting screenshots and beta signups than we were even just last week. So yeah, today's soon is, um, sooner than yesterday's soon. In fact, as the topic of this thread suggests, we're getting into "very soon" territory. So please, just a little more patience, and all will be good...

One other thing:

This actually isn't quite right -- I was referring to screenshots, not beta, when I made this comment. You can see the original thread here: http://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2252.

I probably should have been a little more clear, and that's my fault, but at the same time I don't really see how my post can be interpreted as an unequivocal statement about beta, which is what it's being presented as.

Please be careful when quoting devs, or anyone else for that matter.

High pressure situations!

We're not going to have a "take 20" option, but we are implementing open lock and disable device in such a manner that it'll be much easier to succeed if you don't have to rush.

Of course, sometimes you'll have to rush -- like when the rogue is frantically trying to disable the trigger on the collapsing floor while the rest of the party struggles to hold off the horde of ravenous, flesh-eating ghouls.

Good times.

High pressure situations!

Oops -- I obviously haven't been playing a rogue recently in PnP. Good catch, Maglor.

Real difference between NWN and this game ?

What will be the period between regular content updates?
I mean in AC2 it was first monthly updates but they changed it into bi-monthly updates mainly because of not having enough time to polish the content and fix all the possible bugs.

So will DDO receive monthly updates, bi-monthly updates or are you aiming to something even less frequent pace?

This hasn't been decided yet -- all we know right now is that yes, there will be a dedicated live team, and yes, there will be regular content updates.

Warforged armor

Good question. We do in fact have a solution for making sure that warforged don't fall behind the curve.

First, an explanation of the problem:

Warforged can't wear armor. Instead, they have inherent armor bonuses -- a basic warforged has an inherent +2 armor bonus. For gameplay purposes, they are considered unarmored, but they still can't wear any additional armor. A warforged who takes the Mithral Body feat at first level has an inherent +5 armor bonus, and is considered to be wearing light armor for gameplay purposes. A warforged who takes the Adamantine Body feat at first level has an inherent +8 armor bonus (along with some minor damage reduction), and is considered to be heavily armored for gameplay purposes.

These rules are all from the Eberron Campaign Setting, but we're bringing them over with little or no adjustments, with no immediate plans to change them.

At first glance, things look pretty good for warforged characters -- a first-level warforged fighter with Adamantine Body, for instance, has a base 18 armor class. A human fighter would need to be wearing full plate armor to get the same base AC. Since full plate runs 1,500 gp (according to the Player's Handbook), you won't find many first-level characters wearing it.

However, at higher levels we have a problem -- the warforged, unable to change their armor, is still stuck with the same base 18 armor class. Meanwhile, a high-level human fighter will probably have some kind of magical plate, which now provides much greater than an 18 armor class. So the question is, how can warforged keep up at high levels?

Our solution to this dilemna is an adaptation of an item found in the Eberron Campaign Setting called the docent. Docents are enchanted metal spheres that can be embedded in warforged, providing them with extra abilities. In PnP they take up the amulet slot; our plan for DDO is to have them take up the armor slot on warforged, and provide them with many of the same armor enhancements that can be found on magical suits of armor.

So for example, while the 20th-level human might have a +5 suit of full plate armor, which provides a total of +13 to AC, a 20th-level warforged might have Adamantine Body (+8 AC), and a docent that provides a +5 armor bonus, for a total of +13 to AC.

Note that warforged should be able to use standard magic items in all of the other slots (belt, rings, wrists, feet, etc.)

Hmm..something missing?

All races will have both male and female avatars, with the exception of warforged, which have no gender.

And no facial hair on female dwarves -- sorry.

Give me some Warforged naming examples

According to the Eberron Campaign Setting, warforged can pretty much have any kind of name:

For what it's worth, the one warforged I've played in PnP was a muticlass fighter and cleric of Dol Dorn (CG God of Strength and Arms). His name was "Strongarm."

High speed satelite?

Keep in mind that this is by no means a complete list of the Dev Team -- it's only the people that have signed up for a forums account (and told me about it). I'm sure there are a lot of Dev Team lurkers out there.

Hmm..something missing?

The idea of feminine warforged is interesting, but they don't really work from a lore perspective:

The warforged were created as living weapons; weapons don't usually have a gender. Almost all of them were created to be soliders in the Last War, although from what I gather some of them were created as bodyguards for senior members of House Cannith and other VIPs.

I should note that in Keith Baker's recently-released City of Towers novel ****MINOR SPOILER HERE****, the warforged "PC" does have a brief encounter with a distinctly feminine (in both personality and appearance) warforged, but it's specifically pointed out how strange and unusual this is. Her exact origin is never made clear, although my hunch is that she was created by the warforged who follow the Lord of Blades.

So while feminine-looking warforged might exist in Eberron, they are most definitely the exception rather than the rule. If any appear in DDO, they'll do so as NPCs, not as playable characters. If Eberron lore changes in future updates, we might rexamine this at some point, but for now, warforged will remain non-gendered.

Questions.

Housing is definitely out for release.

Our ship-based adventures will indeed have many things in common with EQ2's opening sequence (you won't be piloting the boats as much as important passengers), but from what I've seen so far, they'll be a little more involved than the EQ2 tutorial.

Which polyhedral are you?

Nik said "Don't post any web polls," but he's not at his desk right now. Web polls are generally silly at best, lame and offensive at worst, but the dev team actually had a lot of fun with this one yesterday:
http://www.dicepool.com/catalog/quiz.php

For the record, I'm a hippie d12, Nik's a bitter and cynical d8 (no surprise there), and Patience (the MEO Online Community Manager) is a logical d10.

And you?

Which polyhedral are you?

I didn't even realize it was a possibility -- it's added to the poll now.

How Long to Reach 20?

A quick reminder here -- just because someone doesn't agree with everything we're doing doesn't automatically make them a troll (if that were the case, our spell point announcement would have created a lot of trolls).

If you don't agree with someone, take the high road and present your counter-arguments. If you can't reach some kind of understanding, then just agree to disagree. If they flame you or start doing other immature things, take the even higher road and just ignore them, or report them to me or Nik if they're being particularly offensive.

But don't resort to calling each other trolls or escalating personal attacks. This community is better than that.

Keith Baker Moderated Chat Log

Great stuff Kale! Thanks for posting this.

One minor correction: Marked for Death is the new Eberron novel by Matt Forbeck; Keith Baker wrote the first Eberron novel, called City of Towers.

Hammer of Justice?

Actually, looking through the 1st edition and 2nd edition Player's Handbooks, I don't see a great hammer/maul listed in those either. There used to be bludgeoning polearms though (bec de corbin and lucern hammer).

Personally, if I were going to add a maul to one of my campaigns, I would probably make it 1d10 (medium size) with an x3 critical.

Secure Trading

Yes, there will be secure trading.

Will there be good and evil PC's?

In most of the campaigns I've played in, evil characters were met with extra scrutiny by the DM -- basically, you'd have to explain why your evil character would be adventuring with the party, and convince the DM that he/she wouldn't be too much of a disruption to the campaign.

I agree with Nifty though -- a well-played lawful evil character can be very good in a party. In fact, I'd even go so far as to suggest that chaotic neutral characters might generally be more disruptive. ("I can do whatever I want -- I'm chaotic neutral!") Of course, a lot of it is about party synergy; stick a dogmatic paladin in a party that trends chaotic, and you're going to have trouble.

As far as evil alignments in DDO go, well, we're still deciding. On the plus side, presenting evil alignments gives players more roleplaying options, which we like. On the minus side, we're worried that evil alignments, if allowed, will serve as a kind of shelter for griefer-types. ("I'm not being a jerk on purpose -- I'm just playing in character.")

So the jury's still out on this one, and we'd like to hear your feedback. Keep in mind though that forum feedback is just one of the things we listen too -- overwhelming feedback for or against evil alignments won't necessarily make it so.

Fernando, DDO Dev Team

High speed satelite?

I'm afraid I have to agree with Aramil here. The short answer is that you are likely to get better results using a 56k modem than a satellite connection.

Long technical explanation:
The reason is that is that satellite connections have horrible latency. Because of D&D's fast paced combat model, we require data to take no more than ~ .2 seconds going either way to or from our servers. We have designed the engine to run the game equally well on any connection that meets this criteria.

Unfortunately, using a satellite it will take ~ .25 seconds for data to reach your machine from our servers in the best case. (This is a hard limit derived from dividing the distance which the signal must travel to and from the satellite by the speed of light, so it won’t get better any time soon either.) What's worse these connection have periods where the latency gets even worse, sometimes reaching closer to .5 seconds. This is probably responsible for the massive lag you have experienced in the past. Satellite is fine for downloading files, but not so much for online games.

The good news is that 56k modems, DSL and Cable connections all exhibit latency well below our target. On the bandwidth side of things, we are designing D&D to run comfortably over a 56k connection, so if you have the option that is probably the way to go.

In other good news you asked a question technical enough to get me to make my second post on these forums ever. So hey, that’s something… .

-Fernando
Director of Game Technology @ Turbine

High speed satelite?

At the moment our plan is to host the servers here on the east coast. However, I expect you should be able to play from Alaska without any problems. Certainly you will have worse latency in connecting to our servers than someone in Boston, but so long as you are under our latency target the game will play as smoothly for you as for anyone else.

The distance I was referring to in my last post was back and forth from a satellite in orbit, which is considerrably greater than the one way distance from the east coast to Alaska. Of course things are slower travelling through several routers on land, but it should still be fast enough.

Owlbear, Owl Bear

Question about Real Time vs Turn Based

We currently have no plans of doing this.

Because the combat system we're implementing is truly real-time, we're making a lot of changes to the way combat works. If we could implement turn-based combat by just adding a pause after every round (like Baldur's Gate does), we would consider it as an option, but it's not that easy in DDO -- in fact, we don't even have combat rounds anymore!