DDO: Flying Solo

I always like to putz around by myself for a bit in any game. No matter how supposedly team-reliant. Just to get a feel for things, see if it's really that hard to go solo, and also to do all the stupidly Darwin Award-worthy things where no one can see. :P

In the utter early levels, meaning tutorial, and not even out of the first rank of Level 1 yet, I'm finding it very enjoyable learning things by myself.

Ironic story: Just as I got out of the tutorial, I got a blind invite. Me being the morbidly curious sort, I accept. I get into this team of five other people, all voice-chat enabled, and they immediately ask me to turn on voice-chat. Uh oh. Yo, I'm a noob out of tutorial, I haven't even figured out half the buttons on the interface yet!

Luckily, I managed to figure out how teamchat works, and I shared the fact I was new with the bunch of them. Call me cunning, but since I know voice-chat features heavily in this game (and I do have a microphone-capable headphone collecting dust, cos I was too embarassed to hear the sound of my own voice - if I get more comfortable with DDO, I'll plug it in), I decided to go the female cleric route first. With a pretty and pronouncable name. (Yeesh, it took a while to get a name that wasn't already taken.)

"Liara." Whoo. Female in distress! Confessing she's new, asking for help. I got the most detailed instructions ever on how to enable hearing voice comm. One of them volunteered to "go get her". Another one shared that, "Oh, I'm also new at this cleric thing, so don't worry." Yet another said, "No worries, just stay back and heal."

I don't mean to imply they were condescending. No, actually I found them a cut above the normal mentally-impaired gamers, and I would have loved to do my first group adventure with them. Since I am a complete noob at this, staying back and healing (fulfill basic team role) -would- be the sensible thing to do until I got better at the game.

I was just totally amused and bemused at how 'helpful' and 'eager' they were. I don't know if it was the gender, the need for a cleric, or just people plain being nice.

Unfortunately, it was the wrong time for it. I literally just stepped off the boat in the tutorial, and I was still getting my feet wet, talking to NPCs and hadn't even gotten the initial 'hold-your-hand' type of quests. Eventually, they put two-and-two together and figured this out, since I hadn't even unlocked the part of the city they were in yet.

Then I think they were too embarassed to kick a newbie they just blind-invited just like that. Because one of them started giving me another detailed walkthrough on what I needed to do next, where the next quest was, "it's solo, so we can't help you through it, so sorry about that", the tavern with the quest was located where, the NPC with the quest is here, you have to do so-and-so to...unsoweiter.

Well, some desperate fooling around with the team interface revealed to me how to "Leave Party" and I thanked them and bowed out gracefully.

Which leads to a slight peeve I have about joining a quest-based game months late. (Goddamn Atari Singapore, why now then got the game. :()

I'm an Explorer in the Bartle sense. I get my kicks out of seeing something new. Something unexpected. I like to be surprised. I like to learn by doing. It's only after I've mucked around for a bit, got my hands dirty, then I go and read up some tips written by those who came before me, and if I'm really stuck, then I go get a walkthrough to be completist about things.

I don't really like being told in excrutiating detail what I have to do next when I could have the joy of the discovery. Now, if I was on a quest with the team, and there's critical information that would be good to have - like there's a trap over here, we have to turn such and such levers, please DO NOT charge into the next room because there's a godwaful beholder really to massacre the first moron walking in - that's cool if you want to share. I wouldn't have minded the OMGWTFBBQ surprise, but if you've already had it once and want to save us from the pain, I understand.

I also feel a bit inadequate when I look at the LFG team comments, and there are some cryptic jargon in there. Only 'ww' quests. Waterworks. (I think that's what ww means.) House quests. Market quests. Err...ok. Just don't expect me to know what they all mean yet until I get to that area. (Unfortunately, since probably 80% of them have played through beta, most of them are old hands at this.)

Anyhow, I'll worry about teaming later. Solo-wise, I'm really getting a kick out of DDO.

Graphically, the game looks very good. The customization details on the facial region are almost CoX quality. Don't think you can change the shape per se, but there's a wide variety of hairstyles, noses, eyebrows, lips, eyes, and colors.

The whole dungeon thing is very reminiscent of the pen and paper dungeon crawls. Almost every room you enter, there's an omniscient narrator that gives you a one or two sentence overview that sets the mood. There's traps. There's levers and puzzles to poke and push around. A lot of chests to open, and barrels and crates to wreck.

I keep thinking if you have a good group who doesn't mind going through things slowly and RPing, you could have a -very- pleasantly immersive experience.

I know I feel like a proper cleric when I'm by myself. I wear armour, I've gotten a heavy mace and steel shield. I can bonk things on the head. I can cast cure light wounds and bless. I'm thrilled to have monster summoning I (which gets me a celestial dog for a while, call me a secret ranger-wannabe, I love pet companions).

And it really feels properly level 1. :P I'm fighting kobolds. I got swamped by three of them and it was a furious fight. Panting when I won. A kobold shaman I wasn't expecting turned out damn tough because of the surprise factor.

And I just got surprised by a monster ambush by a chest. Soooo D&Dish. Here I am, gloating over my spoils, then I hear a funny noise. I turn around and SCREAM. 3-4 brown spiders (well, the game calls them brown spiders. I call them fucking GIANT brown spiders) are all over my viewscreen, each one taking up nearly a quarter of the screen space. I swing my mace wildly, cowering behind my shield, but I'm stuck in a dead-end sewer tunnel. You can guess, there wasn't a happy ending to that one. :P

There's nothing like the experience to really look back on and laugh.

Oh, other stupid things I've done. "I think I can swim this in scalemail, carrying a heavy mace and a heavy steel shield. I'll have breath enough. Doesn't look far." Famous last words. :P Well, it wasn't really my fault. The dang game auto-stuck me to a ladder when I wasn't expecting it and I ended up going up the ladder at a snail's pace, when I could have shot up like a fish in a hurry...(whee, rationalizations. Just glad this Darwin Award thing was done alone.)

I think all this stuff would be really funny in a team who knows each other. But doesn't know the dungeon's secret. In a PUG, I think people might feel a bit more threatened by someone doing something stupid - ie, clueless noob.

The whole xp after mission thing is something I'm enjoying too. It's a change of mechanics. You're less fixated on xp and more interested in completing the mission objectives. Not to mention wrecking stuff and getting your grimey fingers on copper and silver pieces that always conveniently inside barrels and chests. (Note to self: Never store your worldly wealth in underground barrels and chests. S' a lousy hiding place.) The xp will clink in later.

I just need a couple friends, not strangers, to be stupid in a group with. :P