Epic Level & Iconic TR

[Glin]

I am excited to start sharing our plans for the future of the Reincarnation system! Later this year (targeting Update 20) we look forward to introducing two new TR destinations, Epic Destiny True Reincarnation and Iconic True Reincarnation. We’ve got some minor improvements involving Lesser and Greater Reincarnation in store, as well.


We’ve seen a number of questions and discussions about TR, Iconics, and the TR / end-game gap. For the expansion pack, we are focused on ensuring that the new races are fun and playable, the content is fun and beautiful, and that the enhancement system changes launch as expected! With that, we plan to build out the TR system later in the year. The team is also taking the time to get your early feedback as the designers and engineers lock down feature plans. - How does this fit (or change) your playstyle? Read on for details, then let us know!

A few goals for Epic Destiny TR:



Extend Reincarnation system to allow for 38-point builds
Include Epic Destinies in the TR cycle (with Epic Destiny Past Life Feats)
Reward you for additional investment in Epic Destinies (with starting ranks after TR)
Adjust the XP curve in Epic levels for multi-life TR to avoid the dramatic escalating grind
Include Iconics in the TR cycle (with Iconic Past Life Feats)
Allow you to TR into and out of Iconics (if you own Iconics)


How does this system look in practice?

Heroic True Reincarnation



Heroic TR remains primarily unchanged at level 20 or above
Grants a Class Past Life Feat that can stack up to 3x
Adds 2 build points up to a 36 point build
Benefits from the Epic Advantage if you earn Epic Destinies before TR (below)


Epic Destiny True Reincarnation



Can be taken at Level Cap (Level 28 with Shadowfell Conspiracy)
Grants an Epic Destiny Past Life Feat

Feat based on active, maximized Epic Destiny


Karmic Bond -The active ED’s experience is now bonded through each ED True Reincarnation going forward
Grants a Class Past Life Feat (same as Heroic TR)
You must have a maximized, non-bonded ED to complete this TR
Adds 2 build points up to a 38 point build


Epic Advantage


With any type of True Reincarnation, all Epic Destiny Levels earned will give you an advantage when you rebuild your character, by converting Destiny Levels into Heroic Ranks. Every level of Epic Destiny you have earned will count toward ranks earned for your next life. (Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR.)

Iconic True Reincarnation

That’s right; Iconics will have their own form of True Reincarnation, earning their own unique set of past-life feats. You will also be able to TR from any character into an Iconic, which begins at level 15, like normal. Epic Advantage also works on both ends, as well, transferring ED XP earned in your Iconic life, and, if you TR into an Iconic, adding XP on top of your level 15 starting XP.Can be taken at Level Cap (Level 28 with Shadowfell Conspiracy)



Grants an Iconic Past Life Feat that can stack up to 3x
Adds 2 build points up a 36 point build
Earns ranks from Epic Advantage


What else?

Here are some changes we’re currently exploring:



Reincarnation cooldown timer reduced to 3 days.
Reincarnation XP curves smoothed to ease penalties for multiple lives.
Lesser Reincarnation will allow a Heroic character to reincarnate as a Champion. Greater Reincarnation will no longer be sold, in favor of an improved Lesser Reincarnation.
Iconic characters will be able to Lesser Reincarnate


We are eager to begin production on this system and appreciate the many players that are eager to see us fulfill the end game potential that the TR system presents. With these changes we are also keeping a long-term view for TR, such as how to expand the Epic Destiny system and continue to support level cap growth in the future.


Our sincere intentions are to provide these features to you, and the DDO community at large. We invite you response to these details and thank you for your support and fortitude while we roll these changes out in support of this year’s expansion pack. The team is thrilled that DDO continues to grow, innovate, and provide a great D&D experience.

[Charononus]

Complete failure, I'd never ever want to grind out all my ed's again and it sounds like I'd only be able to bond one per tr. This means I'd have to regrind the entire mess of xp out without the nice easy farm of id and rusted blades. Your proposal sounds like it completely kills tr'ing.

[Gratch]

Wow... that's a lot of info. Any chance of a few examples?
If a Legend FVS20/L28 all destinies maxed set with Exalted does an ED TR... do they restart as:
38 pts, add FVS Past Life Feat, add Exalted Past Life Feat and they get heroic XP equal to 11x5 ED ranks... so rank 55 heroic? Or did I misread?

Doesn't look like it changes the heroic completionist feat at all.

So there's now an iconic past life heroic autogrant feat for TR'ing an iconic and an ED past life epic autogrant feat for TR'ing an epic? Does the ED feat stack 3x as well? Need to reread all this.

[Fnordian]

Lesser Reincarnation will allow a Heroic character to reincarnate as a Champion. Greater Reincarnation will no longer be sold, in favor of an improved Lesser Reincarnation.

I'm 100% in favor of this change to Lesser Reincarnation and really hope it's implemented! :)

Most of the new additions and other changes sound good too, except for losing all accumulated ED XP which would make it undesirable in most instances to ever TR except where no EDs have been gained yet (i.e., almost immediately upon reaching level 20, with no previous EDs).

Given that the ED system, from the beginning, kept ED XP intact if a character chose to TR, any change that resets ED XP to 0 (even in exchange for other bonuses) really should be optional, and will almost certainly result in a greatly diminished number of TRs, which in turn will almost certainly result in a decline in active players. The proposed bonus to Heroic ranks, while an interesting idea, doesn't sound like a fair or worthwhile trade for losing all ED XP.

Perhaps some compromise could be reached, such as an option to trade in a single chosen ED for a past life ED feat with the Epic TR. Even then, the past life feat would need to be quite exceptional to be worth giving up an already-earned ED. I imagine some sort of bonus to that ED (if re-acquired) or other EDs that increases their power or utility would make sense.

[SisAmethyst]

Epic Advantage

With any type of True Reincarnation, all Epic Destiny Levels earned will give you an advantage when you rebuild your character, by converting Destiny Levels into Heroic Ranks. Every level of Epic Destiny you have earned will count toward ranks earned for your next life. (Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR.)


Wait wait wait, do I get this right we suddenly loose our Epic Destiny progress when we TR? You mean the fact that some players TRed at level 25 to already unlock other Destinies will suddenly get the short end? I can't say I am very fond of that idea. Or do you expect that we first start to Epic TR to bond them so we not loose our progress on reincarnation? So all players that already unlocked all of them and invested fate points would loose everything? Or do I miss something?

[MrkGrismer]

Complete failure, I'd never ever want to grind out all my ed's again and it sounds like I'd only be able to bond one per tr. This means I'd have to regrind the entire mess of xp out without the nice easy farm of id and rusted blades. Your proposal sounds like it completely kills tr'ing.

I am not sure they are saying that you loose the ED xp. It is possible that the "Karmic Bond" is just to 'check off' a maximized ED solely for the purposes of it being used to add 'ranks' to your TR. If so, that would mean that with each epic TR you would have to make a different maxed ED active right before your TR in order to get the bonus ranks.

I think more clarification on this would be helpful. If it works as you are reading it (and I am hopeing the "Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR." is a misprint), where you loose ALL ED experience except for the bonded ED then I would agree that it would be a FAIL.

[Charononus]

Wait wait wait, do I get this right we suddenly loose our Epic Destiny progress when we TR? You mean the fact that some players TRed at level 25 to already unlock other Destinies will suddenly get the short end? I can't say I am very fond of that idea. Or do you expect that we first start to Epic TR to bond them so we not loose our progress on reincarnation? So all players that already unlocked all of them and invested fate points would loose everything? Or do I miss something?

That's the way I read it too, horrible situation.

[Charononus]

I am not sure they are saying that you loose the ED xp. It is possible that the "Karmic Bond" is just to 'check off' a maximized ED solely for the purposes of it being used to add 'ranks' to your TR. If so, that would mean that with each epic TR you would have to make a different maxed ED active right before your TR in order to get the bonus ranks.

I think more clarification on this would be helpful. If it works as you are reading it (and I am hopeing the "Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR." is a misprint), where you loose ALL ED experience except for the bonded ED then I would agree that it would be a FAIL.

I really hope you're right and it's a misprint. I was excited to hear about the idea of epic tr. I like most of the epic quests much more than low level and would have been very happy to do it. But I do not want to lose all the xp I ground out on epic destinies. Please please please turbine let me be wrong.

[Gratch]

Wait wait wait, do I get this right we suddenly loose our Epic Destiny progress when we TR?

I'm guessing there's going to be True Hearts of Wood for similar to current heroic TR that doesn't affect your ED XP as well as new Epic True Hearts of Wood that require you to be L28, have an active maxed ED and this will wipe out your ED XP but will give you the new ED past life feat and will lock ("bond") that Epic TR'ed ED as capped. So epic completionist is when you have Epic L28 TR'ed Each ED... noting that ED you TR will lock it in and the biggest thing will be regaining L28 Xp each time.

[DagazUlf]

I got to the part where I'm tossed under the bus for having maxed out my Epic Destinies already and stopped reading before I kicked a dog, or a bunny, or whatever's close. :(

Please consider making some allocation for those of us that have already been working on our Destinies since they were released.... how many months ago now?

Just ridiculous.

[Ytteri]

I agree with Charononus, losing all destiny xp is a major kick in the teeth. It's hard to imagine any past life feats that would be worth that. And if you do manage to make something worthwhile, you run into game balance issues between people who stack up a bunch of them vs. people who don't have any.

You say that we'll gain heroic ranks for any epic destiny xp lost.... well great, but which ranks? The first ranks? It takes maybe 90 minutes to gain the first 15 or so ranks on a 36 point build. Seems like a poor return on investment. Bear in mind that maxing out destinies as they are now takes 21,780,000 xp, compared to the 4,378,500 it takes to get to level 20 on a 36 point build. Anyone who has spent the last year maxing out their destinies (or who have tried to and haven't been able to come close which is probably the majority of players) likely won't even consider it.

[Grosbeak07]

I got to the part where I'm tossed under the bus for having maxed out my Epic Destinies already and stopped reading before I kicked a dog, or a bunny, or whatever's close. :(

Please consider making some allocation for those of us that have already been working on our Destinies since they were released.... how many months ago now?

Just ridiculous.

Although I have personally avoided doing a destiny grind until I heard more about this, I have to agree with Dag that there needs to be something for people who have already maxxed out all their destinies, otherwise... yuck.

[Deadlock]

Here are some changes we’re currently exploring:


Reincarnation XP curves smoothed to ease penalties for multiple lives.




The Heroic XP curves are just fine where they are. There are no penalties for multiple lives, there is a reduced XP requirement for a 1st and 2nd life, but from 3rd life onwards it's fine as it is. You might want to sort out some the crappy XP you get from some of the quests, but the actual XP requirements to level themselves are fine.

[Jacobius]

I really hope you're right and it's a misprint. I was excited to hear about the idea of epic tr. I like most of the epic quests much more than low level and would have been very happy to do it. But I do not want to lose all the xp I ground out on epic destinies. Please please please turbine let me be wrong.

I believe also that even when you epic TR you start back at level 1. Were you thinking they would have a way to TR just back to 20? I also was liking what I saw until I noticed the part of losing you ED's XP for any type of TR. That is just a horrible thought.

[Atremus]

Please clarify the loss of Epic Destiny XP.

We have ground out 19 million XP and don't see the point to do it all over again if we lose all 19 million for 2 measly build points.

[Atremus]

Double post. Go forums go

[SilkofDrasnia]

Wait wait wait, do I get this right we suddenly loose our Epic Destiny progress when we TR? You mean the fact that some players TRed at level 25 to already unlock other Destinies will suddenly get the short end? I can't say I am very fond of that idea. Or do you expect that we first start to Epic TR to bond them so we not loose our progress on reincarnation? So all players that already unlocked all of them and invested fate points would loose everything? Or do I miss something?

Yuck this is how I am reading it too. It looking like anyone that has maxed out most if not all of their ED will have to re grind all their EDs and regain their fate points. Hope I am wrong otherwise this means people going for completionist will have to do no more than on ED per life.

Devs we need clarification on this.


With any type of True Reincarnation, all Epic Destiny Levels earned will give you an advantage when you rebuild your character, by converting Destiny Levels into Heroic Ranks. Every level of Epic Destiny you have earned will count toward ranks earned for your next life. (Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR.)

The part in green is saying if you ever TR again you will lose your maxed EDs unless you bond one which you HAVE to do via Epic Destiny TR which can only be taken at lvl 28.

If you TR at 20 say buy bye EDs.

If this is how it works...********. Hopefully I am reading it wrong otherwise I will go kill some ponies.....

[dlsidhe]

Alright, so, to sum up:

*EDs will have their own PL feats.
*Epic TRs grant the ED-PL for the Bonded ED and erase ED XP for non-bonded EDs.
*Epic TRs will allow up to 38-pt builds.
*Regular TRs will function as normal...EXCEPT...
*ALL TRs will offer "Epic Advantage," one heroic rank per ED level gained.
*LRs will now create 32-pt builds
*Iconics get their own PL feats.
*You can TR into an Iconic (Nae's third life will be a Shadar-Kai, thank you).
*GRs are being eliminated.
*XP per TR might be reworked (please and thank you).

Sounds reasonable.

[redspecter23]

So if I'm reading this correctly, any type of TR, including heroic TR will wipe my destinies clean. Massive ouch. I guess if I have any TR'ing to do, I should do it before the new TR system hits.

Glin, I hope you realize that at this point in time, the level increase to 28 is actually a penalty on players, especially those looking to TR. We of course need more info on what is in store for these 3 levels, but based on current information, it's a handful of hp, saves and skills as well as a feat. The penalty is a massively reduced quest pool to gain experience from as you start to suffer overlevel penalties after you reach level 28 and start farming destiny xp.

Basically, you want players to start their epic destiny xp grind from scratch and earn one destiny per TR (epic or heroic). So if I TR (epic or heroic) my toon that has maxed out epic destinies, I get to keep one of them, say dreadnaught as well as 55 ranks toward my next life (due to 5 levels in each of 11 destinies).

Now my next question is, for my followup destiny TR, now that dreadnaught is bonded, will I always receive 5 free ranks into my new TR? So my second destiny TR will start me at level 2 and my 3rd (assuming I bond another destiny) will start me at level 3 and so on?

Also, this is the big question here. How do we attain destiny TR hearts? Will it be store only? Or will be we able to earn them in game in some reasonable fashion, like standard TR hearts?

[Kevindithas]

I like the idea but not my interpreted understanding of the implementation planned, plz don't take all our destiny xp for Epic Re-Incarnation, obviously take our epic level xp tho.

[Hokiewa]

Yet another "game system" when previous incarnations of "new game systems" are still woefully incomplete. Can you for once finish something that you've started. You are diving into a new system when you have not published the debalce of an enhancement system?

Lol.

[maddmatt70]

Wow. This is going to lead to several people quitting DDO. They just ground out a godzillion destiny experience and now if they true reincarnate they lose all that so a player's options are to:
1. never true reincarnate again. This means that the player can not remake a build that becomes washed up or try something different and has overall less reason to play ddo because they can not participate in the new grind.
2. Reincarnate again for some advantages, but you lose all that xp and all the time spent earning the xp was an absolute waste of time. Not to mention reincarante means losing alot of power that the player previously had. They lose all their twists, fate points etc.

Producer Glin this is terrible.

[Charononus]

I believe also that even when you epic TR you start back at level 1. Were you thinking they would have a way to TR just back to 20? I also was liking what I saw until I noticed the part of losing you ED's XP for any type of TR. That is just a horrible thought.

It was more what I had thought the system would be like from previous rumors ext, this thing I think is an abomination.

[Deadlock]

A few goals for Epic Destiny TR:


Adjust the XP curve in Epic levels for multi-life TR to avoid the dramatic escalating grind




So this means that it won't be what we currently have from 20 to 25 projected forward to 28? So it won't be:



21 300,000
22 750,000
23 1,350,000
24 2,100,000
25 3,000,000
26 4,050,000
27 5,250,000
28 6,600,000


Any reason we can't get specific numbers on this? You're upping the cap to 28 in 2 months time ... so which will we go live with on the 19th August? This or something different? And if this, are you saying that it will then be adjusted?

[Jacobius]

Alright, so, to sum up:

*EDs will have their own PL feats.
*Epic TRs grant the ED-PL for the Bonded ED and erase ED XP for non-bonded EDs.
*Epic TRs will allow up to 38-pt builds.
*Regular TRs will function as normal...EXCEPT...
*ALL TRs will offer "Epic Advantage," one heroic rank per ED level gained.
*LRs will now create 32-pt builds
*Iconics get their own PL feats.
*You can TR into an Iconic (Nae's third life will be a Shadar-Kai, thank you).
*GRs are being eliminated.
*XP per TR might be reworked (please and thank you).

Sounds reasonable.


This part (in Red) also removes all ED xp gained that is not bonded even on a regular TR the way it reads. That is the part people are not liking at all.

[debo]

Can you clarify that those of us with 30+ lives will have to REDO atleast 1 life for EACH Epic Destiny in order to get the epic destiny past life thing?
Or is there going to be a way to ONLY TR the actual epic destiny part lvl 20-28 instead of lvl 1-28 again?

[Loromir]

I think I too read it as you lose non bonded desitinies when you EPIC TR.....I don't think Iconic or Heroic TR will cost you the destinies.

Just like with Heroic TR, there has to be some trade off. When you TR as Heroic, you lose all Pre's, Feats, Enhancements, etc....you start over from scratch with only 2 extra stat points..

I don't really have a problem with losing your epid destinies when you epic TR. I would like to see the option to go into the destiny of your new TR'd class without having to follow the map however.

[SisAmethyst]

I am not sure they are saying that you loose the ED xp. It is possible that the "Karmic Bond" is just to 'check off' a maximized ED solely for the purposes of it being used to add 'ranks' to your TR. If so, that would mean that with each epic TR you would have to make a different maxed ED active right before your TR in order to get the bonus ranks...

I hope you are right, but yes, more clarification on this topic would be much appreciated as otherwise it will stop my further reincarnation plans.


I'm guessing there's going to be True Hearts of Wood for similar to current heroic TR that doesn't affect your ED XP as well as new Epic True Hearts of Wood that require you to be L28, have an active maxed ED and this will wipe out your ED XP but will give you the new ED past life feat and will lock ("bond") that Epic TR'ed ED as capped...

Arggh, not sure this is such a good idea. I mean I am very happy they finally get rid of that LR and GR clutter. So that is really a good change that a LR will allow to transfer from 28pt to 32 pt. But if they just got rid of the GR heart to add a couple of more hearts where you then even have to take care as hell that you not get the wrong one or wipe your ED, nahhhh ...

[Teh_Troll]

I have to read this like 4 more times . . . but did these guys actually find a way to make the ED grind in DDO worse? :cool:

[Charononus]

I have to read this like 4 more times . . . but did these guys actually find a way to make the ED grind in DDO worse? :cool:

Feels like another case of corrupt a wish doesn't it.

[Jacobius]

I think I too read it as you lose non bonded desitinies when you EPIC TR.....I don't think Iconic or Heroic TR will cost you the destinies.

Just like with Heroic TR, there has to be some trade off. When you TR as Heroic, you lose all Pre's, Feats, Enhancements, etc....you start over from scratch with only 2 extra stat points..

I don't really have a problem with losing your epid destinies when you epic TR. I would like to see the option to go into the destiny of your new TR'd class without having to follow the map however.

Except this were it states with ANY kind of TR you lose ED XP that is not bonded.





With any type of True Reincarnation, all Epic Destiny Levels earned will give you an advantage when you rebuild your character, by converting Destiny Levels into Heroic Ranks. Every level of Epic Destiny you have earned will count toward ranks earned for your next life. (Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR.)

[jalont]

Some comments: 1. IF you reduce the xp curve for TRs, then you must also implement the 3 day reincarnation timer. If you're going to make is easier for the casuals, you've got to give the top tier players something to work towards. Forcing power gamers to reduce their play to casual status is never a good thing.

2. Honestly, I'm a bit confused about Epic TRing. Perhaps I need more coffee. But, I have no problem with an optional separate TR system that makes you reset EDs. It takes a weekend to max out EDs, and it's sort of the problem I have with endgame. After a weekend worth of play, there's nothing to do in endgame. Again, this has to be optional and completely separate from the TR system we have now so that casuals that do not wish to participate and have their xp reset don't have to even deal with it.

3. The Iconic Hero system is stupid and convoluted. Adding an entire separate TR system for them is even more stupid. Should just have added a couple new classes that act the same as what we have now.

4. So am I to assume that the enhancement pass IS coming with the expansion? You seem to hint at that.

[Loromir]

I think I too read it as you lose non bonded desitinies when you EPIC TR.....I don't think Iconic or Heroic TR will cost you the destinies.

Just like with Heroic TR, there has to be some trade off. When you TR as Heroic, you lose all Pre's, Feats, Enhancements, etc....you start over from scratch with only 2 extra stat points..

I don't really have a problem with losing your unbound epid destinies when you epic TR. I would like to see the option to go into the destiny of your new TR'd class without having to follow the map however.


Just to clrify, It would suck to lose all the destinies you had already grinded out. It forces you to make a decision...do I TR my toon with Max ED's or do I stay put and keep em. Maybe I roll up an Alt and make him my epic completionist.

I have to say, the Epic Past life feats and Epic Completionist feat are going to have to be pretty good to justify grinding out the past lives over again.

[dlsidhe]

This part (in Red) also removes all ED xp gained that is not bonded even on a regular TR the way it reads. That is the part people are not liking at all.

If that's not optional, then that's really, really, really bad. It doesn't effect my playstyle in the bit, but those who have Max'd EDs might not want to give up all their work.

[EazyWeazy]

I like some of the ideas here, but the Epic TR has some glaring holes. Mostly related to people who have supported this game and turbine grinding out destinies since MOTU launched. I'm not one of them, I only have a couple of guys at 25 with more than 2 or 3 max destinies, but even I can see the problem there. Please make sure to consider this and adjust this plan accordingly before you implement.

Thanks,

Dunk

[Gratch]

Wow. This is going to lead to several people quitting DDO. They just ground out a godzillion destiny experience and now if they true reincarnate they lose all that so a player's options are to:
1. never true reincarnate again. This means that the player can not remake a build that becomes washed up or try something different and has overall less reason to play ddo because they can not participate in the new grind.
2. Reincarnate again for some advantages, but you lose all that xp and all the time spent earning the xp was an absolute waste of time. Not to mention reincarante means losing alot of power that the player previously had. They lose all their twists, fate points etc.

Producer Glin this is terrible.

[Response deleted from incorrect info.]

I agree... there should be a means to heroic and/or iconic TR without touching epic destiny xp the way there is now.

[fourrumtest]

not impressed. and have no confidence in the devs to make something that does not suck for the players. when do we get those quality of life fixes? the game is worse than before they were announced.

[oradafu]

Epic Advantage


With any type of True Reincarnation, all Epic Destiny Levels earned will give you an advantage when you rebuild your character, by converting Destiny Levels into Heroic Ranks. Every level of Epic Destiny you have earned will count toward ranks earned for your next life. (Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR.)

Utter failure right here. Reasons why:
1) The complete gutting of XP from Challenges
2) The lingering repeat penalty from Epic quests
3) The lingering repeat penalty and degradation of optional XP
4) The completely out of whack ramp up of XP for TR2s and Epic Destinies which causes player burn out
5) The inability to earn XP for "bad" Epic Destinies while using "good" and/or capped Epic Destinies
6) The continued neutered XP for upper Heroics that prevents early Epic players from earning decent XP in those quests, so the Epic XP gets used up quite early
7) The total obvious lack of Epic quests (besides the poor upper heroic XP) that hampers the amount of XP needed to cap
8) Lack of consistent additional sources of XP available in the game, such as Challenges and Monster Manuals
9) The complete neutering of XP in Challenges and Monster Manuals (although MM3 has decent XP, although the changed format sucks)
10) Lack of fixing the existing Monster Manuals, such as getting mobs that don't register to register and making Account Hunters achievable for Mephit, Elves, Halflings, WF and Zombies (although Account hunters gives no XP)
11) Lack of updating of existing ones, such as increasing individual slayers or additioal individual hunters for increased mob population (aka Human) in Monster Manuals...(I'd go further and ask again for the 1XP per kill of mobs for players who own MM)

I'm sure I'm missing other reasons, but these are just a handful of reasons why scrubbing any XP from Epic Desinties is a horrible idea. I can state for a fact that if Epic Desinty XP is scrubbed via TR, you have just killed TRing in the game...and possibly a good portion of your player base will quit.

[SilkofDrasnia]

Epic ED TR is separate from Heroic TR. Heroic TR remains mostly unchanged... except that there's new iconic (subrace) classes to heroic TR. Or you can Epic TR and pickup a heroic TR in the process. Kind of nice to introduce the new iconic and epic new TR's at the same time so that those already at 30 past lives could EPIC TR through the iconics (4 iconics x 3 PL feats) and pickup all 11 ED's of epic TR if they wanted ultra-ultra-ultra completionist.

BTW... what do all ED bonded epic completionists get?

Hmmm... After a few rereads... I'm not crazy mad at this system. I could take my current completionist with max'ed ED's, get enough xp to level 28... epic TR and lose all my ED XP... though my next life would start at Rank55. Then if I wanted to Epic completionist as well... I'd need to run 11 more lives up to L28 (though only one ED has to be maxed each time.... though you'll get 3-4 ED's going up to L28)... which will translate into more heroic or iconic past lives (stack up to 3x) plus the singular past life feat for each ED.

As a caveat for those with maxed ED levels... maybe allow that ED TR to start at L20 instead of rank 55. That seems to be the biggest bubble burst...

From what I read doesn't matter if you heroic or epic tr, ANY KIND of TR makes you lose your destiny xp which is a major major major kick in the teeth to people that have many maxed out destinies or to people that like to max out a destiny or or 3 before TRing again.

Some of us like it this way as it keeps us from over dosing on one or the other.

[Teh_Troll]

I agree with Charononus, losing all destiny xp is a major kick in the teeth. It's hard to imagine any past life feats that would be worth that. And if you do manage to make something worthwhile, you run into game balance issues between people who stack up a bunch of them vs. people who don't have any.



The power from these PL feats would need to be insanely OP for me to consider junking my EDs on ANY of my toons.

I'm talking game-breaking OP.

[mixomatozis]

Im up for changes, this game needs it. But if i loose all my eds that i was farming like a moron for months on my toons that already have them then good bye DDO...

[Gratch]

From what I read doesn't matter if you heroic or epic tr, ANY KIND of TR makes you lose your destiny xp which is a major major major kick in the teeth to people that have many maxed out destinies or to people that like to max out a destiny or or 3 before TRing again.

Some of us like it this way as it keeps us from over dosing on one or the other.

You're right... it does say any TR kills ED XP. Hmmm... they might need to play with that or at least add in some qualifier if you've maxed all of them to make it worthwhile (aka worth more than just heroic xp ranks). I like my addition of bonus fate points for TR'ing a max ED'd toon. Though that's a power gamer angle... someone who only plays enough to get their toons to L3 of each destiny for maximum fate points/xp would probably want MORE in the case they need to TR.

[oradafu]

The power from these PL feats would need to be insanely OP for me to consider junking my EDs on ANY of my toons.

I'm talking game-breaking OP.

This is exactly what I'm thinking also. The only thing that comes close to me thinking this might work would be if the Bonded Epic Destiny(s) are accessible at level 1 when you TR. Practically anything less than that kills TRing if you have anything in the Epic Destinies unlocked.

BTW, does this scrubbing of ED XP also destroy all the Fate Points? Because I read nothing in the statement that touched on Fate Points or Twists of Fate.

[Beethoven]

Epic Destiny True Reincarnation

So, let me see if I understand this:

I need two maximized Epic Destinies to qualify for Epic TR (one bonded, one not bonded).

So, I create a new toon (Bard), level him to level 28 and max out Fatesinger and Draconic Incarnation. Then I Epic TR into, say, Wizard and bond with the Fatesinger Destiny.

I willl loose all levels of Draconic Incarnation and instead get to start at Rank 5 (level 2) as 34 point build, Bard Past Life feat and (bonded) Fatesinger ED. Now I level to 28 again, max out Magister and again Draconic Incarnation. I bond with Magister and epic TR into Sorcerer.

Now, as Sorcerer, I again get to start at Rank 5, my build will be 36 points now and I will have bonded Fatesinger and Magister Destinies. Again I level to 28, this time maximizing Draconic Incarnation and Shadowdancer. My next epic TR will be Rogue, I bond with Draconic Incarnation. I will now start as 38 point build with Fatesinger, Magister and Draconic Incarnation bonded to me.

Personally, I don't think this is a bad system in and off itself, especially with TR's getting easier and faster.

The largest issue I see is that it feels like those who have multiple/all Destinies maximized getting shafted a lot. It hurts some for existing Completionists as they'd need to do one full set of TRs yet again if they want to grind out all Epic Destinies, but at least Heroic TRs give them Past Life feats.

People who maximized Epic Destinies get fairly little (1 rank per level of Epic Destiny you loose is practically not even worth mentioning). I believe I understand where you want to go with the system, making maximizing all your Destinies more a long term project rather than something easily accomplished in a few days of work. Personally I think you should reconsider the Epic Advantage - as it is it still makes it a fairly harsh deal for a large portion of the playerbase.

[Jacobius]

This is exactly what I'm thinking also. The only thing that comes close to me thinking this might work would be if the Bonded Epic Destiny(s) are accessible at level 1 when you TR. Practically anything less than that kills TRing if you have anything in the Epic Destinies unlocked.

BTW, does this scrubbing of ED XP also destroy all the Fate Points? Because I read nothing in the statement that touched on Fate Points or Twists of Fate.

Hmmmm if you get to keep your fate points and when you level back your destinies you get fate points again allowing for higher level 2nd and 3rd twists them it MIGHT again I say MIGHT be worth it.

[Drwaz99]

The power from these PL feats would need to be insanely OP for me to consider junking my EDs on ANY of my toons.

I'm talking game-breaking OP.

Bingo. There is almost no chance I would do an Epic TR and lose my gained ED. It was too painful/time consuming to gain.

This is something that really needs to be seriously, seriously rethought.

[Teh_Troll]

Personally, I don't think this is a bad system in and off itself, especially with TR's getting easier and faster.
.

This is unacceptable for toons who already have maxed out their destinies. All that time and effort flushed down the toilet.

Unacceptable.

Need an answer on this . . . does Heroic TR blank out your ED XP?

[Deadlock]

Epic Advantage

With any type of True Reincarnation, all Epic Destiny Levels earned will give you an advantage when you rebuild your character, by converting Destiny Levels into Heroic Ranks. Every level of Epic Destiny you have earned will count toward ranks earned for your next life. (Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR.)


So assuming that I have all ED's capped and then in subsequent lives TR as soon as I hit level 28
Assuming ED XP doesn't change, it's still 1,980,000 XP to cap an Epic Destiny.
Assuming Epic XP doesn't change (although we know it will) this means you need 6,600,000 XP to cap at 28 distributed among the ED's to get as many as level before you Epic TR again.

1st Epic TR = Start at rank 1 + 55 = 56
2nd Epic TR = Start at rank 1 + 27 = 28
3rd Epic TR = Start at rank 1 + 32 = 33

If you're actually lowering the Epic XP requirements, then you will have less ED levels so will start at a lower heroic rank, but it will have been easier go get there ... sound about right?

Or, if you decide to TR into an Iconic, which sounds more interesting to gain a new Iconic Past Life will mean that you are

1st Epic TR = Start at rank 71 + 55 = 126
2nd Epic TR = Start at rank 71 + 27 = 98
3rd Epic TR = Start at rank 71 + 32 = 103

Am I understanding this properly? With the disclaimer that it won't actually be 6,600,000 Epic XP to get you to 28 in the future.

So if you have at least 25 ED levels when you TR into an Iconic, you can effectively end up back at 20 again?

[Teflondon22]

Sounds awesome, I just hope the new past life feats are worth the trouble.

[oradafu]

Hmmmm if you get to keep your fate points and when you level back your destinies you get fate points again allowing for higher level 2nd and 3rd twists them it MIGHT again I say MIGHT be worth it.

After I submitted my reply, I had a thought that if both Fate Points were stay and Twist of Fates (from Bonded Epic Destinies) were accessible at level 1, that MIGHT be acceptable along with new additional PL bonuses. Like you said, it MIGHT...but the wiggle room is awfully small on that "might".

[dejafu]

Okay... I like the sound of everything else on this except the whole "lose your ED XP whenever you do any kind of TR." I'm holding off on saying "kill it with fire" until I hear what exactly you mean by the "heroic ranks" your EDs will be converted to. Because if it just means that you start off at a higher Heroic level in your next life... yeah, that's not going to cut it.

Whatever it means, I think people will be a LOT happier if you leave "classic" TR completely alone and make this new system part of "Epic Destiny True Reincarnation" only. People who are miffed about losing their hard-earned ED XP can then just ignore the new system and lose nothing in the process. Sound fair?

Could we get some Dev feedback on this ASAP? That's a lot of infodump to process there that needs clarification.

[Teh_Troll]

Okay... I like the sound of everything else on this except the whole "lose your ED XP whenever you do any kind of TR." I'm holding off on saying "kill it with fire" until I hear what exactly you mean by the "heroic ranks" your EDs will be converted to. Because if it just means that you start off at a higher Heroic level in your next life... yeah, that's not going to cut it.

Whatever it means, I think people will be a LOT happier if you leave "classic" TR completely alone and make this new system part of "Epic Destiny True Reincarnation" only. People who are miffed about losing their hard-earned ED XP can then just ignore the new system and lose nothing in the process. Sound fair?

Could we get some Dev feedback on this ASAP? That's a lot of infodump to process there that needs clarification.

I'm of that mind, if I can ignore this insanely bad idea I don't have to care about it. But losing my ED XP on a heroic TR is not acceptable at all.

[Grosbeak07]

This is unacceptable for toons who already have maxed out their destinies. All that time and effort flushed down the toilet.

Unacceptable.

Need an answer on this . . . does Heroic TR blank out your ED XP?

You won't get any answers in this thread. This was put out there to gauge how players are going to receive this idea.

[Teh_Troll]

You won't get any answers in this thread. This was put out there to gauge how players are going to receive this idea.

If they want to check players honest reactions Turbine needs to check the "other" forum. :cool:

[Beethoven]

This is unacceptable for toons who already have maxed out their destinies. All that time and effort flushed down the toilet.


The largest issue I see is that it feels like those who have multiple/all Destinies maximized getting shafted a lot.

Maybe you should at least try read and comprehend what others are writing?

[Atremus]

Turbine: What did players hate most about the Epic Destiny System?

Coffee Club: Players hate grinding useless destinies

Turbine: let's figure out a way to make the always be in the wrong destiny!


The Epic TR system has so much potential to be great Turbine. I can't wait for my Monk to grind out Magistar for +10 spell pen on a TR......

[Teh_Troll]

Maybe you should at least try read and comprehend what others are writing?

Why? I'm smarter than they are anyway.

[forummuleonly]

If they want to check players honest reactions Turbine needs to check the "other" forum. :cool:


I hear that place is a cesspool.

[Teh_Troll]

Turbine: What did players hate most about the Epic Destiny System?

Coffee Club: Players hate grinding useless destinies

Turbine: let's figure out a way to make the always be in the wrong destiny!


The Epic TR system has so much potential to be great Turbine. I can't wait for my Monk to grind out Magistar for +10 spell pen on a TR......


I'm absolutely astonished that Turbine found a way to take the worst most hated grind in the history of any MMO anywhere and make it more horrible.

Ponderous, fricking ponderous.

I'm so waiting for one of the fanbois to come out and defend this, it'll be glorious.

[forummuleonly]

Ponderous, fricking ponderous.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0xWLahk86I



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0xWLahk86I

[oradafu]

Another question that needs to be answered: Are players still going to be shackled by the Destiny Spheres when they TR? Many players currently hate not being able to start where they want in Epic Destinies. Even more are going to hate being shackled to EDs if ED XP is scrubbed when TRing, especially if they are still going for completionist.

On of the ways getting around the limited choice of EDs is to level up a character in a class that is in the ED that you want so the ED is unlocked before TRing into the class that you want the player to be. For example, playing a Ranger the first life to unlock Shiradi Champion then TRing into an Artificer. However, now it sounds like players must Bond to the ED they want before TRing. In my example, it means players have to stay in the class they don't want (Ranger) for two full EDs before TRing to gain access to the ED they want (Shiradi) before TRing, instead of just TRing at 20 because some points were dumped into the ED you want.

[Teh_Troll]

In other news . . . this makes the Xbox One the second dumbest idea made public this week :eek:

[Dendrix]

***?

I've done heroic completionist and got every destiny to 24 points. So if I TR once more I lose all my ED and have to TR another 11 times (once per destiny) to get them all back again?

So my next TR will gut my character and I have to play 11 more heroic lives (and then 11 more epic to 28 lives), to get back to where I am now?

Seriously?

No way. The loss of my existing stuff is simply too much.


On a TR once I get back to being epic I've lost pretty much everything I already had.

[jalont]

I'm absolutely astonished that Turbine found a way to take the worst most hated grind in the history of any MMO anywhere and make it more horrible.

Ponderous, fricking ponderous.

I'm so waiting for one of the fanbois to come out and defend this, it'll be glorious.

This is a bit over the top. Play other MMOs. A weekend grind is quite easy compared to most other MMOs. On top of that, you don't even need to grind destinies. You can just TR and do one a life, and with some planning, you'll never be in a useless destiny. But for those people that wish to grind out destinies, a weekend of work isn't much.

It's important for this new system to keep this in mind.

[Teh_Troll]

Keep in mind . . . this is not the first time Turbine's presented an idea this insanely stupid that it keeps us distracted from yet another dumb change that's allowed to slip by.

Give us some details about this horrible Epic TR idea . . . right when the ENH pass beta is about to hit . . . let the horrible EHN pass slip right past the golly.

I'd say "well played" but it's just too obvious.

[Jacobius]

This is a bit over the top. Play other MMOs. A weekend grind is quite easy compared to most other MMOs. On top of that, you don't even need to grind destinies. You can just TR and do one a life, and with some planning, you'll never be in a useless destiny. But for those people that wish to grind out destinies, a weekend of work isn't much.

It's important for this new system to keep this in mind.

Do you really honestly think it is only a weekend grind to cap destinies for most players?????

If so you live in a fantasy world.

[jalont]

Do you really honestly think it is only a weekend grind to cap destinies for most players?????

If so you live in a fantasy world.

No I don't. But those people shouldn't be in such a hurry to cap destinies either. Capped destinies aren't needed for the epic content it will take them a years time to play through....

[Teh_Troll]

This is a bit over the top. Play other MMOs. A weekend grind is quite easy compared to most other MMOs. On top of that, you don't even need to grind destinies. You can just TR and do one a life, and with some planning, you'll never be in a useless destiny. But for those people that wish to grind out destinies, a weekend of work isn't much.

It's important for this new system to keep this in mind.

I'm sorry but I don't understand your point and I don't want to wrongly flame you.

But what about this system is good?

Losing ED XP on a heroic TR is not acceptable under any circumstance. I'll simply never TR anything again.

[Teh_Troll]

No I don't. But those people shouldn't be in such a hurry to cap destinies either. Capped destinies aren't needed for the epic content it will take them a years time to play through....

Who are you to tell anyone anything about how they should play a game?

[InsanityIsYourFriend]

The epic TR system has soooo much potential, and as you are saying your implementing would have worked but for one problem:
__________________________________
We already have destinies capped!!!!

If I had known that I could TR and keep a single destiny (as it seems to be read) then I would not have capped a bunch of destinies. An easy way to keep the system viable: heroic TR does not lose destiny xp, when you epic TR you keep all your fate points. That way with enough epic TRs you could theoretically have 3 tier 4 twists.

just my 2 cents

[Munkenmo]

Epic Advantage


With any type of True Reincarnation, all Epic Destiny Levels earned will give you an advantage when you rebuild your character, by converting Destiny Levels into Heroic Ranks. Every level of Epic Destiny you have earned will count toward ranks earned for your next life. (Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR.)

If this isn't optional, Everything you've written re: Heroic and Iconic TR's is a complete and total utter failure.

[dlsidhe]

Do you really honestly think it is only a weekend grind to cap destinies for most players?????

If so you live in a fantasy world.

I consider myself pretty casual, and while it's not a weekend grind, it's only about a week of work to cap a destiny.

I'm more concerned with the retooling of TR XP overall, as right now it's several months of work for me to go from 1 to 20. If that dials down to a more reasonable level, I'll be happy...especially if it's retroactive, so current TR2+ toons suddenly get their levels boosted.

[jalont]

Losing ED XP on a heroic TR is not acceptable under any circumstance. I'll simply never TR anything again.
This I agree with, and is exactly what I'm saying.

[jalont]

Who are you to tell anyone anything about how they should play a game?

I'm sorry? Where did I tell someone how they should play the game? Casuals don't need all the goodies and shouldn't have all the goodies. The system agrees with me. No more dumbing down this game so everyone can feel special.

[Teh_Troll]

If this isn't optional, Everything you've written re: Heroic and Iconic TR's is a complete and total utter failure.

/signed.

This "Epic Advantage" nonsense will kill your game if it's not optional.

[-Zephyr-]

I, like many others, dislike that "Epic advantage" idea a LOT.
I also dislike that it will prevent me from playing with my friends if we TR at the same time but without the same ED levels.

Solution to both those at once : let us choose to NOT use the epic "advantage" ! If it's supposed to be an advantage, we should be able to say "no thanks". And that way we can start at 1 with our friends and level like we've always done, ie from scratch, with our beloved EDs still there.

Or at least, let us choose that for heroic TR. And for epic TR, only reset the tree we're binding if we choose not to use the advantage.

[Deadlock]

I am not sure they are saying that you loose the ED xp. It is possible that the "Karmic Bond" is just to 'check off' a maximized ED solely for the purposes of it being used to add 'ranks' to your TR. If so, that would mean that with each epic TR you would have to make a different maxed ED active right before your TR in order to get the bonus ranks.

I think more clarification on this would be helpful. If it works as you are reading it (and I am hopeing the "Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR." is a misprint), where you loose ALL ED experience except for the bonded ED then I would agree that it would be a FAIL.

I read it that each time you Epic TR you "bond" a destiny, that's the one that you get the Epic Destiny Past Life Feat for, that's the one you keep the ED XP for and you lose the ED XP from any "unbonded" destinies.

Your Fate points will be reset based initially on your ED Levels, so that's not changing, so you'll initially start with less. Each time you get to 20 you will initially have a number of Fate Points based on your "bonded" destinies.

I've re-read this a load of times and ran some numbers and it's not so bad.

[redspecter23]

If this isn't optional, Everything you've written re: Heroic and Iconic TR's is a complete and total utter failure.

Well that would mean that standard True Druidic Heart of Wood would be a "bad" idea right? Meaning that you would be encouraged to buy the True Druidic Heart of Destiny in order to get any sort of advantage. So the hearts that you can currently earn in game with tokens lose functionality and Turbine can set the price on the new hearts. They didn't technically remove them from the game, but reduced their functionality while releasing a new heart with a new price point and limited in game access.

I get what you're saying though. If you have any sort of destiny maxed, then doing a standard TR seems quite silly as you don't get to "bond" any destiny xp at all. You would be a fool not to bond something before TR'ing, meaning you are encouraged to use the new destiny TR widget, whatever it might be.

[Levonestral]

The biggest problem I have here is that the bind between ED levels and fate points.

The current explained implementation basicaly destroys all the effort people have put into grinding out fate points

I don't mind grinding out the ED's I want for a given character, gain access to the twists I want. But then I'm stuck grinding out endless ED xp just for only the purpose of getting fate points to open up the slots I want.

Some things they could consider:

- Allow us to "lock" the ED of choice as previously mentioned by them for the purpose of the past life
- Then allow us to choose between converting existing ED levels into heroic ranks to save effort in next life OR choose to keep the existing ED's and matched fate points.

- Alternatively, they could separate fate point experience from ED experience and allow us to carry over earned fate points into future lives regardless of what ED's we have. Obviously we would have a "cap" on how many fate points you can earn regardless of number of past lives.

[Candela90]

No... no... no...
I dont want to loose my EDs... Seriously - I may loose my epic lvls, my heroic lvls but no EDs.
And if epic TR makes you lvl 1 AND wipes out all EDS besides 1 - this is nt fun. At all.
Maybe if it did put you on lvl 20 with the bound destiny - and then you would have to grind 28 lvl and 1 destiny to max - and then TR again to 20 lvl - having 2 bound not-wiped destiny thats ok... but leave my earned fate points or Ill be angry...

[EnziteBob]

the loss of ED xp sucks but for all we know that is what the ED past life feats are for. Who knows that could all change by the time it hits live.

[Hokiewa]

I'm sorry? Where did I tell someone how they should play the game? Casuals don't need all the goodies and shouldn't have all the goodies. The system agrees with me. No more dumbing down this game so everyone can feel special.

This is dumbing down the game. It's content without content. Nobody should worry though because if enhancements go through as scheduled......well, that will be fun to watch.

[Teh_Troll]

I, like many others, dislike that "Epic advantage" idea a LOT.
I also dislike that it will prevent me from playing with my friends if we TR at the same time but without the same ED levels.

Solution to both those at once : let us choose to NOT use the epic "advantage" ! If it's supposed to be an advantage, we should be able to say "no thanks". And that way we can start at 1 with our friends and level like we've always done, ie from scratch, with our beloved EDs still there.

Or at least, let us choose that for heroic TR. And for epic TR, only reset the tree we're binding if we choose not to use the advantage.

I have to say calling this an "advantage" is a steaming pile of nonesene. Trading in Millions of XP for thousands . . . what kind of "advantage" is this?

[Hokiewa]

the loss of ED xp sucks but for all we know that is what the ED past life feats are for. Who knows that could all change by the time it hits live.

Turbine has a fantastic, positive reputation for this.

[Crazyfruit]

I like the sound of this. (I have not grinded out every epic destiny. For those of you concerned about that, remember that you'll get enough EXP to fill several on the road to 28 again.)

I have three questions:

Will there be epic / iconic completionist?

Will there be enough content to hit level 28 repeatedly without it becoming dull and repetitive?

Will this form of TR be DDO-store only?

[Deadlock]

So if I'm reading this correctly, any type of TR, including heroic TR will wipe my destinies clean. Massive ouch. I guess if I have any TR'ing to do, I should do it before the new TR system hits.

I'm reading it if you Heroic TR you don't affect your ED XP at all - although you will still get the benefit of gaining ranks from your ED levels - so you could start at level 12 each time with capped ED's?
If you Epic TR you reset your ED XP for any "unbonded" destiny.

Actually, maybe starting at level 12 each time would be overkill.

EDIT: Nah, scratch that. If you Heroic TR it should work exactly as it does right now. You start at level 1 and your ED XP is untouched. If you choose to Epic TR then you start at level 1 or 15 depending if you are TRing to an Iconic or not, and you gain additional ranks based on the number of ED levels you had when you TR'd. That'll work out okay ..... so long as it's crystal clear that Epic TRing is optional but will cost you ED XP.

[HotMaarl]

I have to say calling this an "advantage" is a steaming pile of nonesene. Trading in Millions of XP for thousands . . . what kind of "advantage" is this?

Calm down. You have 14 posts in the first 4 pages of this thread. We only have partial information. Stop inducing panic, breath and let someone else talk. Enough spam.

[Charononus]

Calm down. You have 14 posts in the first 4 pages of this thread. We only have partial information. Stop inducing panic, breath and let someone else talk. Enough spam.

Yes because participating in a conversation about a horrible idea that wasn't thought thru at all is spamming. I've been thinking about the concept they tossed out and still can't find anything good to say about it. Secret World is looking better and better even though I have to buy a new computer to play it.

[Teh_Troll]

Calm down. You have 14 posts in the first 4 pages of this thread. We only have partial information. Stop inducing panic, breath and let someone else talk. Enough spam.

Who are you to tell me anything? I'm not breaking any of the forums rules so if I'm bothering you put me on ignore. Or don't and you might learn something.

I'm actually laughing about all of this, but this is Turbine and when has "partial information" not lead to the worst case scenario?

[Krumm]

Lots of questions....


EPIC Destiny TR (EDTR) - (Guess this means Epic "Destiny" TR, not Epic "Level" TR)
a. when you EDTR, do you go back to level 1 or level 20 (I'm thinking 20 but I'm going to ask anyways)
b. if you go back to level 20, does your quest completions reset? (So I have some quests to run without running into massive repeat penalty)
c. if your quest completions reset, does it reset at quest level 1, or just epic quests (20+)?
d. do the favor rewards reset with quest completion counter reset?
e. When you do multiple EDTR, do all your previous bonded destinies get reset or do they stay at max level/tier?


I have more questions but lets just start here.


Also, just a small suggestion.
If TR xp curve is redesigned, not to mention adding iconic class TR (is this class or race addition or neither), please make Completionist feat a passive auto-grant (@ character creation to character that achieve it) and make it permanent so that we can not loose it when TR system changes.

[Teh_Troll]

I'm reading it if you Heroic TR you don't affect your ED XP at all.
If you Epic TR you reset your ED XP for any "unbonded" destiny.

You're reading it wrong.

As stated in the first post all TRs go through that "epic advantage" garbage where your ED levels get traded for heroic ranks.

[Edwinge]

There's a few things that I think could use clarification.

Mostly I'm a bit confused on the Iconic reincarnation. It sounds like iconic TR is something you do at level cap to become an iconic character (i.e. can be anything before but you start at level 15 + advantage).

If this is the case, however, how exactly do iconic past life feats work? Do you get it when you iconic TR into the iconic? If so, it wouldn't really be a PAST life feat.... or do you get it only after you TR again out of the iconic? Do you also get normal heroic TR past life feats? Can epic destiny TR be done in conjunction with it or are they separate?

Let me illustrate with some examples of how I understand the system and where my main questions are.

Bob is a level 28 human fighter with a maxed out legendary dreadnaught. He has never done any form of TR before. He has the choice of doing a heroic TR, an epic destiny TR, or an iconic TR since he qualifies for any of them.

If Bob opts for a heroic TR he gains a heroic fighter past life feat, loses all his epic destiny xp, and starts at level 1 + advantage based on his prior life's epic destiny levels.

If Bob opts for an epic destiny TR he gains a heroic fighter past life feat, gains a legendary dreadnaught past life feat, loses all epic destiny xp except what's in his legendary dreadnaught tree, and starts over at level 1 + advantage based on his prior life's epic destiny levels. Do the levels in legendary dreadnaught that he doesn't lose also count towards the amount of advantage?

If Bob opts for an iconic TR he loses all epic destiny xp and starts over as an iconic character at level 15 + advantage. Would a heroic fighter past life be granted at this time? A legendary dreadnaught past life feat would not be granted at this time, correct? Would an iconic past life be granted at this time? If an iconic past life feat is granted at this time, how exactly is it a past life feat? If not, what exactly is the benefit of iconic TR? Is the iconic past life granted after your next TR? Am I totally misunderstanding how iconic TR works? I'm confused.


Personally, I see no reason to have iconic TR as a completely separate thing. In my opinion, there's should just be two types of TR, heroic and epic.

In my proposal, epic can work as you describe, that's fine with me, and heroic can work as it always has with one caveat. If you are an iconic character, you would need to be level 28 to do a heroic TR instead of 20. You can then ditch the idea of iconic past life feats. Or, alternately, you can create racial past life feats for all races (including iconic ones). You can then award a race and a class past life feat when you heroic TR. Each past life (race and class) could stack up to 3x. Just make sure that they are all unique and desirable and you'll have people TR'ing into and out of iconics as well as the base races.

[oradafu]

I have to say calling this an "advantage" is a steaming pile of nonesene. Trading in Millions of XP for thousands . . . what kind of "advantage" is this?

It's probably designed by the same person who thought trading in multiple of the really rare collectibles for a random item was a great idea. You know, the need of 5 Lightning Split Soarwood for a random Ruby Augment or 5 Amulets of the Archbishop for a random Sapphire Augment, when I'm averaging about 2 of those collectibles per year when I grab up as many of the collectibles as possible.

[Gkar]

Alright, so, to sum up:

*EDs will have their own PL feats.
*Epic TRs grant the ED-PL for the Bonded ED and erase ED XP for non-bonded EDs.
*Epic TRs will allow up to 38-pt builds.
*Regular TRs will function as normal...EXCEPT...
*ALL TRs will offer "Epic Advantage," one heroic rank per ED level gained.
*LRs will now create 32-pt builds
*Iconics get their own PL feats.
*You can TR into an Iconic (Nae's third life will be a Shadar-Kai, thank you).
*GRs are being eliminated.
*XP per TR might be reworked (please and thank you).

Sounds reasonable.

You missed the part where all ED is lost if you use a standard TR.

[eonfreon]

Well, I'm curious to see how it all shakes out, but from the initial look here it just looks like another aspect of DDO which I'll try to ignore.

Turbine's development of late has made me a very casual DDO player, just logging in and doing easy quests to max out useless EDs and only occasionally having fun in a useful maxed out ED in EE content when I want a break from the annoying grind and don't care about getting pretty much no reward for it.

A system that wipes away almost all current progress so that I can restart, yet again? Really, Turbine? You guys are really getting lazier and lazier. It seems you spend too much time figuring ways for us to keep redoing old content instead of creating new content.


Hopefully, Turbine will have a better plan for Epic TRing than what this system currently sounds like.

[Dawnsfire]

Complete failure, I'd never ever want to grind out all my ed's again and it sounds like I'd only be able to bond one per tr. This means I'd have to regrind the entire mess of xp out without the nice easy farm of id and rusted blades. Your proposal sounds like it completely kills tr'ing.

The same old heroic TR will be there if that is what you like. I like that there are going to be new options. You do what you like and the rest of us will do what we like.

[Teh_Troll]

the same old heroic tr will be there if that is what you like. I like that there are going to be new options. You do what you like and the rest of us will do what we like.

wrong.




epic advantage


with any type of true reincarnation, all epic destiny levels earned will give you an advantage when you rebuild your character, by converting destiny levels into heroic ranks. Every level of epic destiny you have earned will count toward ranks earned for your next life. (epic destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ed tr.)

[SilkofDrasnia]

I'm sorry? Where did I tell someone how they should play the game? Casuals don't need all the goodies and shouldn't have all the goodies. The system agrees with me. No more dumbing down this game so everyone can feel special.

Define casual mister 2012? You are letting your prejudices run away from you in this post. I bet I know plenty of "casuals" that have more time put into this game than you do and that also have way more know-how.

Oh and regardless of your join date my idea here stands.




The same old heroic TR will be there if that is what you like. I like that there are going to be new options. You do what you like and the rest of us will do what we like.

No it won't it pretty clearly says...



With any type of True Reincarnation, all Epic Destiny Levels earned will give you an advantage when you rebuild your character, by converting Destiny Levels into Heroic Ranks. Every level of Epic Destiny you have earned will count toward ranks earned for your next life. (Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR.)

note in green they say with ANY TYPE OF TR.

[eonfreon]

The same old heroic TR will be there if that is what you like. I like that there are going to be new options. You do what you like and the rest of us will do what we like.

It would be nice if the same old heroic TR is still there. But from the sound of it, they want to change that as well. Because from the sound of it a TR will wipe away all of my Epic Destiny progress as well. Which is NOT how it works in the "old heroic TR" currently.

I just hope since this is an update by a Producer, a type of person who is generally rather clueless about the game mechanics, that he just misunderstood what the developers are really doing and that it won't really work like Glin thiinks it will. Sort of the old "take paralyzing from this weapon and put it on that weapon" type of mistake. This time I'll actually be happy that a Producer gets the mechanics wrong.

[RightToRemainStupid]

More power creep and even more insane levels of grind. This looks like the point at which I'll be jumping ship. I was always more into the character building and manual skills aspect of gaming anyway, not an endless XP/min hamster wheel race. Good luck with it Turbine, it's just too much of a treadmill powered slot machine to keep me interested anymore.

To quote a recent post:


If this is just from your imagination and not something being developed by Turbine, please stop posting ideas endorsing ridiculous power creep and grind. I am sick to death of naive people giving Turbine ideas on how to bog us down in grind, nerfs and time sinks.

You might be doing it in good faith, but what happens is companies like Turbine see this kind of thing as endorsement for even more revenue raising. Meanwhile, we get sidetracked from actually playing the game, into scrambling to keep up with all the grindy, P2P bulls*t, or have our characters end up becoming completely irrelevant.

Stop asking Turbine to screw us over even worse than they already have. Also, be very careful what you ask for from companies like this, or you will likely get it, but now how you envisioned. Before you know it, we will have server past lives, guild past lives, ddo store past lives etc.

Sure saw this one coming.

[Citzen_Gkar]

You're reading it wrong.

As stated in the first post all TRs go through that "epic advantage" garbage where your ED levels get traded for heroic ranks.

Hey, good to see you again. I just thought I'd leave this here from our conversation a couple days ago...


I didn't hear this from someone who plays on the server that can't be named but its possible that by coincidence the server that can't be named might be testing a version of Epic TR where you have to max out all ED destiny XP bars, then you Epic TR which resets your ED to 0 XP in all destinies. You have to level the EDs from scratch, but for your first Epic TR you unlock the new 4th twist slot and get 1 twist point, and for each subsequent Epic TR you get another twist point (up to a total of 3 extra twist points). For Epic Completions you need to complete 3 Epic TRs and then when you start that 4th life you get a free Epic feat (counts as L21 epic feat)


I give this troll an 8.5 out of 10.

There is no way Turbine would make this a re-level of destinies, even they cannot be that stupid. That's the insane/inane level of grind that'll make people quit.

Ok, so maybe it wasn't exactly as we heard about today but pretty darn close eh? lol

Boy I must be a good guesser.

[losian2]

I am excited to start sharing our plans for the future of the Reincarnation system! Later this year (targeting Update 20) we look forward to introducing two new TR destinations, Epic Destiny True Reincarnation and Iconic True Reincarnation. We’ve got some minor improvements involving Lesser and Greater Reincarnation in store, as well.


We’ve seen a number of questions and discussions about TR, Iconics, and the TR / end-game gap. For the expansion pack, we are focused on ensuring that the new races are fun and playable, the content is fun and beautiful, and that the enhancement system changes launch as expected! With that, we plan to build out the TR system later in the year. The team is also taking the time to get your early feedback as the designers and engineers lock down feature plans. - How does this fit (or change) your playstyle? Read on for details, then let us know!

A few goals for Epic Destiny TR:



Extend Reincarnation system to allow for 38-point builds
Include Epic Destinies in the TR cycle (with Epic Destiny Past Life Feats)
Reward you for additional investment in Epic Destinies (with starting ranks after TR)
Adjust the XP curve in Epic levels for multi-life TR to avoid the dramatic escalating grind
Include Iconics in the TR cycle (with Iconic Past Life Feats)
Allow you to TR into and out of Iconics (if you own Iconics)


How does this system look in practice?

Heroic True Reincarnation



Heroic TR remains primarily unchanged at level 20 or above
Grants a Class Past Life Feat that can stack up to 3x
Adds 2 build points up to a 36 point build
Benefits from the Epic Advantage if you earn Epic Destinies before TR (below)


Epic Destiny True Reincarnation



Can be taken at Level Cap (Level 28 with Shadowfell Conspiracy)
Grants an Epic Destiny Past Life Feat

Feat based on active, maximized Epic Destiny


Karmic Bond -The active ED’s experience is now bonded through each ED True Reincarnation going forward
Grants a Class Past Life Feat (same as Heroic TR)
You must have a maximized, non-bonded ED to complete this TR
Adds 2 build points up to a 38 point build


Epic Advantage


With any type of True Reincarnation, all Epic Destiny Levels earned will give you an advantage when you rebuild your character, by converting Destiny Levels into Heroic Ranks. Every level of Epic Destiny you have earned will count toward ranks earned for your next life. (Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR.)

Iconic True Reincarnation

That’s right; Iconics will have their own form of True Reincarnation, earning their own unique set of past-life feats. You will also be able to TR from any character into an Iconic, which begins at level 15, like normal. Epic Advantage also works on both ends, as well, transferring ED XP earned in your Iconic life, and, if you TR into an Iconic, adding XP on top of your level 15 starting XP.Can be taken at Level Cap (Level 28 with Shadowfell Conspiracy)



Grants an Iconic Past Life Feat that can stack up to 3x
Adds 2 build points up a 36 point build
Earns ranks from Epic Advantage


What else?

Here are some changes we’re currently exploring:



Reincarnation cooldown timer reduced to 3 days.
Reincarnation XP curves smoothed to ease penalties for multiple lives.
Lesser Reincarnation will allow a Heroic character to reincarnate as a Champion. Greater Reincarnation will no longer be sold, in favor of an improved Lesser Reincarnation.
Iconic characters will be able to Lesser Reincarnate


We are eager to begin production on this system and appreciate the many players that are eager to see us fulfill the end game potential that the TR system presents. With these changes we are also keeping a long-term view for TR, such as how to expand the Epic Destiny system and continue to support level cap growth in the future.


Our sincere intentions are to provide these features to you, and the DDO community at large. We invite you response to these details and thank you for your support and fortitude while we roll these changes out in support of this year’s expansion pack. The team is thrilled that DDO continues to grow, innovate, and provide a great D&D experience.

Focusing on the "new races", emphasis on the plurality. What new races? :O Are the iconic heroes being labeled 'races' for some reason?

[Teh_Troll]

I just hope since this is an update by a Producer, a type of person who is generally rather clueless about the game mechanics, that he just misunderstood what the developers are really doing and that it won't really work like Glin thiinks it will. Sort of the old "take paralyzing from this weapon and put it on that weapon" type of mistake. This time I'll actually be happy that a Producer gets the mechanics wrong.

LOLz . . . it's true that our greatest hope lies in the general cluelessness of the producers. I'm hoping this is another paralyzing weapon thingy and he just got the talking points wrong.

If Epic "Advantage" is optional this is all fine and good. If this is mandatory they've just killed TRing which means they killed their game.

[losian2]

Complete failure, I'd never ever want to grind out all my ed's again and it sounds like I'd only be able to bond one per tr. This means I'd have to regrind the entire mess of xp out without the nice easy farm of id and rusted blades. Your proposal sounds like it completely kills tr'ing.

Except for everyone who didn't spend time grinding out every single ED. The problem is people do things and make assumptions about the future - If I do this unecessary grind now, I'll never have to do it again! Obviously the devs job is to add incentive to continue playing, if they endlessly let people keep and stack up more and more of this stuff there's less incentive.. I'm frankly not surprised, and from the standpoint of anyone who hasn't already wasted a bunch of time grinding a bunch of EDs they don't need/use, it makes a lot of sense. Someone with a few EDs worked heavily on won't lose much at all and would see the merit of the system. TRing has never been anything BUT a continued grind, so I don't know what people expected really.

[luvirini]

(Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR.)


Ouch, So if we have EDs in use today, we just lose that 27+ million XP?

And if we have few destinies at level 4, we just lose it?

So you want people to just stop TRing?

[Citzen_Gkar]

It would be nice if the same old heroic TR is still there. But from the sound of it, they want to change that as well. Because from the sound of it a TR will wipe away all of my Epic Destiny progress as well. Which is NOT how it works in the "old heroic TR" currently..

Yeah, this would break the game for me. I currently am enjoying running a character up to 23-25 while running some epic quests, then TRing using the hearts I have earned from epic tokens, running up another past life, then restarting epic grinding with fresh repeat/first time counters and a long break since I was in those quests.

After this... I'm not even sure if I want to log in tonight. It just makes any ED progress I make completely pointless and it basically prevents you from TRing at any point from 20-27 unless you want to lose all ED progress that life.

Yeah, this is a game stopper.

[Citzen_Gkar]

Focusing on the "new races", emphasis on the plurality. What new races? :O Are the iconic heroes being labeled 'races' for some reason?

Yeah, that's exactly what they are calling them. You pick them from the race selection screen in the game. The "WF Bladeforge" is considered as separate a race as Elf is from Helf.

[Gratch]

Focusing on the "new races", emphasis on the plurality. What new races? :O Are the iconic heroes being labeled 'races' for some reason?

Given he's talking about the expansion pack he mean's the new iconics.. which are technically D&D sub-races++ (they modify starting stats but use enhancements of a primary race but also give level up benefits for certain classes). I don't think DDO is adding any entirely-their-own races or classes until they finish the enhancement redo on the current race/class set they have.

[Charononus]

If Epic "Advantage" is optional this is all fine and good. If this is mandatory they've just killed TRing which means they killed their game.

Especially since they're releasing nge I mean the enhancement pass at pretty much the same time. I can make myself kind of accept the nge I mean enhancment pass even though I think it's pretty bad, this on top of it.............

[Teh_Troll]

So you want people to just stop TRing?

I think that is there goal. I don't think Turbine's happy that the Motu and FR stuff isn't played as much because to be quite honest TRing is more fun. This might be the poison pill for TR.

[Citzen_Gkar]

Iconic True Reincarnation

That’s right; Iconics will have their own form of True Reincarnation, earning their own unique set of past-life feats. You will also be able to TR from any character into an Iconic, which begins at level 15, like normal. Epic Advantage also works on both ends, as well, transferring ED XP earned in your Iconic life, and, if you TR into an Iconic, adding XP on top of your level 15 starting XP.Can be taken at Level Cap (Level 28 with Shadowfell Conspiracy)


What else?

Here are some changes we’re currently exploring:



Reincarnation cooldown timer reduced to 3 days.
Reincarnation XP curves smoothed to ease penalties for multiple lives.
Lesser Reincarnation will allow a Heroic character to reincarnate as a Champion. Greater Reincarnation will no longer be sold, in favor of an improved Lesser Reincarnation.
Iconic characters will be able to Lesser Reincarnate



These things btw are good. It's just TR/Epic TR that you have totally destroyed.

[Teh_Troll]

Except for everyone who didn't spend time grinding out every single ED. The problem is people do things and make assumptions about the future - If I do this unecessary grind now, I'll never have to do it again! Obviously the devs job is to add incentive to continue playing, if they endlessly let people keep and stack up more and more of this stuff there's less incentive.. I'm frankly not surprised, and from the standpoint of anyone who hasn't already wasted a bunch of time grinding a bunch of EDs they don't need/use, it makes a lot of sense. Someone with a few EDs worked heavily on won't lose much at all and would see the merit of the system. TRing has never been anything BUT a continued grind, so I don't know what people expected really.

Anyone who wants sense Weakness on any melee toon that isn't gonna be FoTW needs to pretty much max out every destiny. A 4-2-1 twist setup requires this.

I'm sorry, to be all you could be this was needed.

and now it'll all get flushed away . . . if you TR?

People simply won't TR.

[Flavilandile]

*popcorn*

You know what ?

You just killed TR...

Nobody is going to TR once this hits live as they are going to loose all their destinies.

Personally I don't care, I don't TR, I TRed once, and it was because the PnP Character is a Druid... I made her a Cleric as Druid wasn't available, and I TRed her as a Druid when it became available.
But seriously :

are those that take the decision to implement things like that play the game ? ( the way it should be played, with god mode deactivated, on a live server )

[oradafu]

Focusing on the "new races", emphasis on the plurality. What new races? :O Are the iconic heroes being labeled 'races' for some reason?

The Iconic Heroes are considered races. They all must start as a specific race and class, although they can be leveled up in different classes.

Bladeforged are WF Paladins at level 1.

It appears that Morninglords will be Elf Clerics at level 1, Purple Dragon Knight will be Half-Orc Fighters at level 1, Shadar-kai Assassin will be Human (?) Rogues at level 1. At level 2, you can change each of these to another class, but the first level and race will always start the same.

[SilkofDrasnia]

Except for everyone who didn't spend time grinding out every single ED. The problem is people do things and make assumptions about the future - If I do this unecessary grind now, I'll never have to do it again! Obviously the devs job is to add incentive to continue playing, if they endlessly let people keep and stack up more and more of this stuff there's less incentive.. I'm frankly not surprised, and from the standpoint of anyone who hasn't already wasted a bunch of time grinding a bunch of EDs they don't need/use, it makes a lot of sense. Someone with a few EDs worked heavily on won't lose much at all and would see the merit of the system. TRing has never been anything BUT a continued grind, so I don't know what people expected really.

No one made any assumptions, it was tried and tested and found that Destiny XP remains when you TR.

It's like saying anyone that has completionist will have to regrind all the classes to reacquire completionist because they have decided you NEED to choose a new added option and bond those past lives and you can only bond one per life.


There is no good reason to defend this massive..... bleh

[Ragons]

After reading a couple of pages seems that I am among the few who is looking forward to this. I see this as extending the game for me. I was happy when they added the Heroic TR to game. I never liked the rinse and repeat the same few quest, I try to run the different quests at level while doing the optionals within those quest. This new epic ED TR gives me a wider range of charactor development to work with, this does make me happy. I will be taking advantage of the ED TRing.

[Teh_Troll]

There is no good reason to defend this massive..... bleh

I think the only explanation for somebody defending it is they are either trolling or don't understand it.

[omeganeg1]

Except for everyone who didn't spend time grinding out every single ED. The problem is people do things and make assumptions about the future - If I do this unecessary grind now, I'll never have to do it again! Obviously the devs job is to add incentive to continue playing, if they endlessly let people keep and stack up more and more of this stuff there's less incentive.. I'm frankly not surprised, and from the standpoint of anyone who hasn't already wasted a bunch of time grinding a bunch of EDs they don't need/use, it makes a lot of sense. Someone with a few EDs worked heavily on won't lose much at all and would see the merit of the system. TRing has never been anything BUT a continued grind, so I don't know what people expected really.

The goal of most games is to make yourself as powerful as the system allows. I would bet that a lot players would argue that grinding out EDs to make themselves more powerful wasn't a waste of time. Also, I think its a fair assumption that the developers of a game aren't going erase a player's progress in a mechanic that was intended to require grinding.

[Aashrym]

Give us 1 level per rank in all ED's so we can start again at level 20 and work the work our heroic TR past life feats completely in epic levels and then those additional destinies we lose have value. That would be nice, if possible. Not likely, but nice. ;)

Just for something different...


...For the expansion pack, we are focused on ensuring that the new races are fun and playable...

What is it that will make these new races fun?

[Rendron]

Like a kick in your face.

1st they let us grind all the ED and sell there XP portions.
and they say. ha lets clear them out again.

If i will loose my ED's while i TR Heroic i will quite the game.
Maybe the other new games are good for a look and a try.
3 years playing this game... it's a shame.

Turbine you will maybe loose a lot of loyal paying players!

[cforce]

I think that is there goal. I don't think Turbine's happy that the Motu and FR stuff isn't played as much because to be quite honest TRing is more fun. This might be the poison pill for TR.

I dunno, seems unlikely. People on the hamster wheel = more revenue; I think Turbine knows that TR'ing is a revenue generator for them, much more so than a specific content pack?

Here's the million-dollar question for me: will losing ED xp result in loss of unlocked twist slots? If I get to keep all fate points (or potentially earn even more than the current max) by re-leveling destinies, I might consider it. That potentially cuts out a *lot* of the re-grind; usually only two or three of the EDs are ones I *actually* care about; all the others I'm leveling (and being annoyed about being in, most of the time) purely to generate fate points for twists.

I'll take my Pale Master as an example. The destinies I'm actually using, between active use and twists, are DI, Magister, and Shiradi. If I "lock in" Shiradi, keep all my twist slots as they stand, and start leveling up DI/Magister again at 20, earning *more* fate points to the point where I can twist 4/4/4, I'm interested. If all fate points/slots are lost, too, then I'm out, and never TR'ing.

[ithicuss]

I am excited to start sharing our plans for the future of the Reincarnation system! Later this year (targeting Update 20) we look forward to introducing two new TR destinations, Epic Destiny True Reincarnation and Iconic True Reincarnation. We’ve got some minor improvements involving Lesser and Greater Reincarnation in store, as well.


We’ve seen a number of questions and discussions about TR, Iconics, and the TR / end-game gap. For the expansion pack, we are focused on ensuring that the new races are fun and playable, the content is fun and beautiful, and that the enhancement system changes launch as expected! With that, we plan to build out the TR system later in the year. The team is also taking the time to get your early feedback as the designers and engineers lock down feature plans. - How does this fit (or change) your playstyle? Read on for details, then let us know!

A few goals for Epic Destiny TR:



Extend Reincarnation system to allow for 38-point builds
Include Epic Destinies in the TR cycle (with Epic Destiny Past Life Feats)
Reward you for additional investment in Epic Destinies (with starting ranks after TR)
Adjust the XP curve in Epic levels for multi-life TR to avoid the dramatic escalating grind
Include Iconics in the TR cycle (with Iconic Past Life Feats)
Allow you to TR into and out of Iconics (if you own Iconics)


How does this system look in practice?

Heroic True Reincarnation



Heroic TR remains primarily unchanged at level 20 or above
Grants a Class Past Life Feat that can stack up to 3x
Adds 2 build points up to a 36 point build
Benefits from the Epic Advantage if you earn Epic Destinies before TR (below)


Epic Destiny True Reincarnation



Can be taken at Level Cap (Level 28 with Shadowfell Conspiracy)
Grants an Epic Destiny Past Life Feat

Feat based on active, maximized Epic Destiny


Karmic Bond -The active ED’s experience is now bonded through each ED True Reincarnation going forward
Grants a Class Past Life Feat (same as Heroic TR)
You must have a maximized, non-bonded ED to complete this TR
Adds 2 build points up to a 38 point build


Epic Advantage


With any type of True Reincarnation, all Epic Destiny Levels earned will give you an advantage when you rebuild your character, by converting Destiny Levels into Heroic Ranks. Every level of Epic Destiny you have earned will count toward ranks earned for your next life. (Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR.)

Iconic True Reincarnation

That’s right; Iconics will have their own form of True Reincarnation, earning their own unique set of past-life feats. You will also be able to TR from any character into an Iconic, which begins at level 15, like normal. Epic Advantage also works on both ends, as well, transferring ED XP earned in your Iconic life, and, if you TR into an Iconic, adding XP on top of your level 15 starting XP.Can be taken at Level Cap (Level 28 with Shadowfell Conspiracy)



Grants an Iconic Past Life Feat that can stack up to 3x
Adds 2 build points up a 36 point build
Earns ranks from Epic Advantage


What else?

Here are some changes we’re currently exploring:



Reincarnation cooldown timer reduced to 3 days.
Reincarnation XP curves smoothed to ease penalties for multiple lives.
Lesser Reincarnation will allow a Heroic character to reincarnate as a Champion. Greater Reincarnation will no longer be sold, in favor of an improved Lesser Reincarnation.
Iconic characters will be able to Lesser Reincarnate


We are eager to begin production on this system and appreciate the many players that are eager to see us fulfill the end game potential that the TR system presents. With these changes we are also keeping a long-term view for TR, such as how to expand the Epic Destiny system and continue to support level cap growth in the future.


Our sincere intentions are to provide these features to you, and the DDO community at large. We invite you response to these details and thank you for your support and fortitude while we roll these changes out in support of this year’s expansion pack. The team is thrilled that DDO continues to grow, innovate, and provide a great D&D experience.

I for one think that instead of taking away the destiny xp we already farmed maybe u should just only be alowed to bond 1 destiny per tr and then u get back to lvl 28 and u can bond another 1 of ur destinies that u already earned and tr again without loosing any destinies u previously farmed otherwise the amount of grinding needed is a fail me and alot of people that have grinded several lives without the use of xp stones will defenitly not be happy

[Aliss7]

If the new Epic TR'ing does not take into account the existing ED XP you've already earned, then it's game over. No due over. No add quarter to continue. It's over. Turn off the lights and close the door.

[Certon]

Wait a second. You mean, you offered me an expansion pack, along with a tempting bonus to buy the add-on stuff to get my owlbear hireling, and I bought it too. Then, before the expansion pack comes out, you DEMOLISH everything I love about DDO?

I want my money back.

Bait and switch.

[Teh_Troll]

I dunno, seems unlikely. People on the hamster wheel = more revenue; I think Turbine knows that TR'ing is a revenue generator for them, much more so than a specific content pack?

.

We're dealing with a bunch of divas who think "their" content is better than what came before.

I have 4 toons who are max ED. They will never be TR'd again. I like leveling and they don't have that many PLs so that's gotta be at least 10 hearts in a year that I won't buy (I buy most in the DDO store, cash easier to come by than tokens). I know I'm not the only one. No hearts, not XP pots, nothing for me to spend money on.

TRing IS the end-game of DDO. it's the lifeblood. Doing anything that discourages this is suicide.

[SilkofDrasnia]

They need to either change it so when you TR you do not lose your destiny xp OR let people bond more than one destiny when they TR.

[Charononus]

Wait a second. You mean, you offered me an expansion pack, along with a tempting bonus to buy the add-on stuff to get my owlbear hireling, and I bought it too. Then, before the expansion pack comes out, you DEMOLISH everything I love about DDO?

I want my money back.

Bait and switch.
Same here, unless they change this they might as well close the servers, it'll be the same thing in the end, but with a flat out server closure they might keep some good will for whatever games they produce in the future.

[Dandonk]

Epic Advantage: Ummm. OK. It's not the lowlevel that's a problem with TRs, but OK, free xp is free.

38 point builds: Awesome, sounds great.

ED past life feats: Cool, sounds interesting!

Iconic TR: Sounds interesting!

Reduced timer: Eh, fine I guess. Never an issue for me.

XP curves smoothed: Sounds promising, hopefully this'll make TR less of a grind.

"(Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR.)"
....

Say what??
All my 8 capped EDs on donk will go poof if I TR? Really? Whoever thought this would be a good idea??

[TimethiefXVI]

Turbine you got it wrong.
All destenies but the one you want to TR in are locked at the current state. In order to TR any ED you must take an Epic TR which will set you back to lvl 20.
You can earn XP for EDs that are not maxed out during this process, in order to make another ETR the TRed Desteny must be maxed out.

Right now i want my preordered money back, i dont want it wasted on such a bad idea. Pls get some creative personal that is locked down in an assylum for life

[Delacroix21]

I know there will be people who will argue this point (as they have mastered the TR system) but it is the truth even if they don't want to admit it.

The current TR system is broken and used only by power gamers who have mastered the system.

What you intended for TR:
1. Players will relevel toons increasing number of low level players and groups.
2. Current players get added power as an incentive.
3. New players to DDO won't leave the game as now they will have. People to group with!

What happened to TR:
1. XP penalty makes TR such a grind people will only do certain quests avoiding all others.
2. Players will max elite streak and not group with new players who haven't mastered the TR grind.
3. TR feats went from adding power to characters so they could be more broadly focused to being required and having epic content balanced on having multiple past lives (example: cast DCs and SR)
4. New players still have no one to group with and vets are even less willing to help them as TR is a massive XP grind.


What you need to do:
1. Remove TR increased XP costs
2. Increase first time Xp bonuses by double to triple, make people WANT to run every quest at least once
3. Add bonus Xprts. For grouping with new players, maybe 25% make people want new accounts in there group, will this also be exploited? Yes, but what isn't?
4. Make the completionist feat FREE!!!!
5. Make tring fun and not a carefully planned grind with select quests and guildes!




P.S. I worked my nay nays off maxing out every ED, i expect a PL feat for ALL of them when epic TR!

[redspecter23]

A few thoughts after reading this over a bit more.

Is it possible to perhaps bond an entire sphere each life instead of just one destiny? We will be grinding about 3 destinies worth of xp per life anyway. Doing a EDTR once per sphere is significantly less grind, but being able to keep 2 or 3 full destinies right off the start is a bit less "crushing" than just losing it all in one shot.

Could it be possible to separate heroic TR from the ED wipe? Please keep heroic as it is now. Making changes that discourage heroic TR seems a bit backwards. I don't think anyone wants to lose all their destiny xp (without even getting to bond a single one) with a heroic TR. I'd hate to be the casual player that doesn't read the notes on that before pulling the trigger. New elements for a new type of TR is something to be explored. Changing existing TR mechanics is going to annoy a lot of players.

[EllisDee37]

My first reading screams EPIC FAIL, on a level of "shut down the servers and turn off the lights, the game is over."

Possible ways this could be salvaged:

1) As mentioned a few times, you lose all destiny xp (except bonded destinies) but retain all fate points, and any new destiny grinding adds more fate points to that total. This wouldn't just be a save, it would be a total win. None of the current destiny xp people have spent so many hours grinding (almost purely for the fate points) would be wasted in such a system.

2) Plans are scrapped for heroic tr, leaving it the same as it is now. Do a heroic tr and you don't lose any destiny xp and you also don't get any epic advantage or epic past life.

3) When the change is first rolled out to live, all capped destinies on existing character get a special "semi-bonded" flag. Semi-bonded destinies do not get lost on tr, but since they aren't fully bonded you don't get epic past lives for them. You have to actually bond them to get that.

4) This possibility would be both the most and least painful option: You lose all destiny xp on any TR, just like Glin says in the OP, but going forward you can put your epic xp to any unlocked destiny while keeping your preferred destiny active. This would be the most painful in that you'd have to regrind all the destiny xp you already ground out, but it would be the least painful because you could finally be having fun playing your real character while grinding out destinies.

Any of these 4 solutions would fix the EPIC FAIL I see in the OP, and I honestly don't know which one I'd prefer. I think 2) is my least favorite, and though it would be a grievous injury to lose all my destiny xp on all my alts I think 4) would be my favorite. But 1) looks really, really nice too. 3) is kludgy but probably the most fair way to handle it.

[Flavilandile]

Keep in mind . . . this is not the first time Turbine's presented an idea this insanely stupid that it keeps us distracted from yet another dumb change that's allowed to slip by.

Give us some details about this horrible Epic TR idea . . . right when the ENH pass beta is about to hit . . . let the horrible EHN pass slip right past the golly.

I'd say "well played" but it's just too obvious.

Nah, it's not a smoke screen, we already have all our claws, fangs, and other sharp pointy things deep into the Enhanc... erm NGE Pass and are waiting for the next twitch from it to tighten the grip.
It's just that weill have to go Takhisis and grow several heads because we are going to have to be able to bite at several things at the same time


We're dealing with a bunch of divas who think "their" content is better than what came before.

I have 4 toons who are max ED. They will never be TR'd again. I like leveling and they don't have that many PLs so that's gotta be at least 10 hearts in a year that I won't buy (I buy most in the DDO store, cash easier to come by than tokens). I know I'm not the only one. No hearts, not XP pots, nothing for me to spend money on.

TRing IS the end-game of DDO. it's the lifeblood. Doing anything that discourages this is suicide.

Not a big TR fan, but that's how I see things from my side : people were spending money in XP Pot and eventually hearts for TR... with the new system, people will stop TRing, thus stop spending money on XP Pot and hearts.

[Tuffmann]

I am a grinder, and dont mind some grind, i grinded out a completionist before the BB,boxes, and tome of learning.

and it was bareable.

What I hated was grinding out the ED's but ya i did it, even tho it was a whole lot faster then getting my completionist.
It was horrible boreing.....and unfun

Do I want to do that again? NO!

[Cyndder]

I am excited to start sharing our plans for the future of the Reincarnation system! Later this year (targeting Update 20) we look forward to introducing two new TR destinations, Epic Destiny True Reincarnation and Iconic True Reincarnation. We’ve got some minor improvements involving Lesser and Greater Reincarnation in store, as well.


We’ve seen a number of questions and discussions about TR, Iconics, and the TR / end-game gap. For the expansion pack, we are focused on ensuring that the new races are fun and playable, the content is fun and beautiful, and that the enhancement system changes launch as expected! With that, we plan to build out the TR system later in the year. The team is also taking the time to get your early feedback as the designers and engineers lock down feature plans. - How does this fit (or change) your playstyle? Read on for details, then let us know!

A few goals for Epic Destiny TR:



Extend Reincarnation system to allow for 38-point builds
Include Epic Destinies in the TR cycle (with Epic Destiny Past Life Feats)
Reward you for additional investment in Epic Destinies (with starting ranks after TR)
Adjust the XP curve in Epic levels for multi-life TR to avoid the dramatic escalating grind
Include Iconics in the TR cycle (with Iconic Past Life Feats)
Allow you to TR into and out of Iconics (if you own Iconics)


How does this system look in practice?

Heroic True Reincarnation



Heroic TR remains primarily unchanged at level 20 or above
Grants a Class Past Life Feat that can stack up to 3x
Adds 2 build points up to a 36 point build
Benefits from the Epic Advantage if you earn Epic Destinies before TR (below)


Epic Destiny True Reincarnation



Can be taken at Level Cap (Level 28 with Shadowfell Conspiracy)
Grants an Epic Destiny Past Life Feat

Feat based on active, maximized Epic Destiny


Karmic Bond -The active ED’s experience is now bonded through each ED True Reincarnation going forward
Grants a Class Past Life Feat (same as Heroic TR)
You must have a maximized, non-bonded ED to complete this TR
Adds 2 build points up to a 38 point build


Epic Advantage


With any type of True Reincarnation, all Epic Destiny Levels earned will give you an advantage when you rebuild your character, by converting Destiny Levels into Heroic Ranks. Every level of Epic Destiny you have earned will count toward ranks earned for your next life. (Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR.)

Iconic True Reincarnation

That’s right; Iconics will have their own form of True Reincarnation, earning their own unique set of past-life feats. You will also be able to TR from any character into an Iconic, which begins at level 15, like normal. Epic Advantage also works on both ends, as well, transferring ED XP earned in your Iconic life, and, if you TR into an Iconic, adding XP on top of your level 15 starting XP.Can be taken at Level Cap (Level 28 with Shadowfell Conspiracy)



Grants an Iconic Past Life Feat that can stack up to 3x
Adds 2 build points up a 36 point build
Earns ranks from Epic Advantage


What else?

Here are some changes we’re currently exploring:



Reincarnation cooldown timer reduced to 3 days.
Reincarnation XP curves smoothed to ease penalties for multiple lives.
Lesser Reincarnation will allow a Heroic character to reincarnate as a Champion. Greater Reincarnation will no longer be sold, in favor of an improved Lesser Reincarnation.
Iconic characters will be able to Lesser Reincarnate


We are eager to begin production on this system and appreciate the many players that are eager to see us fulfill the end game potential that the TR system presents. With these changes we are also keeping a long-term view for TR, such as how to expand the Epic Destiny system and continue to support level cap growth in the future.


Our sincere intentions are to provide these features to you, and the DDO community at large. We invite you response to these details and thank you for your support and fortitude while we roll these changes out in support of this year’s expansion pack. The team is thrilled that DDO continues to grow, innovate, and provide a great D&D experience.

I am excited to start sharing our plans for the future of the Reincarnation system! <<I don't know why
you are excited...anxious...nervous..awaiting the backlash gets you excited then ok.

How does this fit (or change) your playstyle? Read on for details, then let us know!<< Ok, based upon this announcement a lot of my existing toons will advance to level 28 and NEVER TR again. This would essentially "retire at level 28" 20+ existing toons.

I'd likely build 1 iconic, run 12 lives as an iconic 3 in each and work one epic destiny each life...THEN turn it into a completionist (one life of each) with that toon. So this would force me to focus on just one toon and doing reruns of existing content. Once I've done that I'd probably be done with DDO. (VIP Member since March of 2006)

In short it will have some replay value for about 6-9 months after you do it--yes if it came down to it I could grind the one toon to completionist in about that time with the changes you are talking about.

The questions you've left out is what is this going to do to guilds and the existing player base. Most players I've talked to have been grinding ED awaiting new content are up in arms...I'd expect 20-30% (modestly) in your hard-core gamer base. With the guild decay system I'd see a lot of new small 6 man guilds forming for the remaining hardcore gamers who are willing to take this disaster of a plan you proposed here--given the limited amount of data provided. So your larger guilds will fold or decay away with the loss to the player base.

So, based upon your announcement I'd likely move away from renewing my annual subscription for a year and move to a six month plan when it comes up latter this year...if that.

Our sincere intentions are to provide these features to you, and the DDO community at large.<< I would like to ask that you stop referring to wiping out epic destines on TR's as a 'feature'. You would have been better off completely revamping the ED system completely than stripping abilities from users and trying to tell us you'll love grinding it up again without any changes to the ED system...other than loosing your existing efforts.

[Pandir]

Eh you know the epic TR doesn't sound too bad, but the heroic TR should be unchanged, or even better give the people a choice to either keep the destiny levels or gain heroic ranks.
Wiping the destiny xp on the heroic TR sounds like a REALLY bad idea.

[knightgf]

So, all this bashing and hate is because of the loss of...epic destinies? I shake my head at you people.

Though I will agree that more information would be nice, such as the clarity of various topics and what past life feats we gain.

[Charononus]

Glin,

This month you need to roll up a character on a live server, maybe a bladeforged to make it quicker, play the game and grind a full set of ed's. Then imagine losing all that. This shows a severe disconnect between your players and the producers.

[Marewood]

Snip...
(Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR.)
Snip



How far do you guys think you can push it?

If that goes live I am out.

Addendum:

I just don't get it. Why are you guys trying so hard to **** off your remaining playerbase? I really don't get it.

[Piloto]

Thanks for all the responses so far everyone. The team will try to address the details as best we can this early in development. Here are a few more clarifications as we’re reviewing your comments:

• Our intention is that players will be able to earn or buy Epic Destiny TR hearts of wood.
• We’ll continue to add more epic level content so that players have a variety of paths for leveling.
• To engage with Epic Destiny TR, you don’t have to have all destinies maxed out. Character level 28 + one maxed destiny is when you can bond your first destiny.
• We are revisiting XP curves in not only the Heroic levels but also the Epic levels. This would make leveling (and ultimately bonding) a Destiny a faster process compared to the current pace.
• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

We are also making balance changes to compensate for the fact that the system goes into higher levels, and we expect that parts of the design summary will seem less harsh once these details are better understood. We’ll be reading discussion in this thread and will continue to post here with more details as we go (such as details regarding Fate Points, Completionist, and the exact effects of turning in your Epic Destiny xp on your new life).

[EllisDee37]

Thanks for all the responses so far everyone. The team will try to address the details as best we can this early in development. Here are a few more clarifications as we’re reviewing your comments:

• Our intention is that players will be able to earn or buy Epic Destiny TR hearts of wood.
• We’ll continue to add more epic level content so that players have a variety of paths for leveling.
• To engage with Epic Destiny TR, you don’t have to have all destinies maxed out. Character level 28 + one maxed destiny is when you can bond your first destiny.
• We are revisiting XP curves in not only the Heroic levels but also the Epic levels. This would make leveling (and ultimately bonding) a Destiny a faster process compared to the current pace.
• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

We are also making balance changes to compensate for the fact that the system goes into higher levels, and we expect that parts of the design summary will seem less harsh once these details are better understood. We’ll be reading discussion in this thread and will continue to post here with more details as we go (such as details regarding Fate Points, Completionist, and the exact effects of turning in your Epic Destiny xp on your new life).You seem to have completely missed the one thing that generated near-universal concern: The loss of destiny xp on heroic tr. The only thing I can see in this post that sort of references it is this:

"• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life."

Yeah, except that True Reincarnation DOES NOT AND NEVER HAS removed (or affected in any way) your destiny xp.

In fact, you guys specifically set up a process to help people who lose destiny xp on tr because that's not what's supposed to happen.

[SirShen]

So is that right - if i maxed out all my ED thats 1,980,000 X 11 = 21780000 xp and for that i will get 55 ranks.

Too get 55 ranks second life is 746,750 so i make a loss of 21033250 xp WHY the hell would i max out my EDs for that amount of loss?

Am i missing something? will the Epic Destiny Past Life Feat be that great?

Wish Turbine would give us alot more information instead of half-assed information we get lately.

I just wont TR my main now, so they will make a loss on hearts bought, nice way of shooting yourself in the foot Turbine. HAHA just have to laugh at all this.

[Ovrad]

You know, supposing the ED PL are decent, I'm ok with this change if i can keep my fate points!

Seriously, the fate points are the main reason we grinded out all those ED, otherwise only a handful are actually useful per toon. If I were to lose most of my ED, but keep all my fate points, I'd be really looking forward to this change.

[-Zephyr-]

• To engage with Epic Destiny TR, you don’t have to have all destinies maxed out. Character level 28 + one maxed destiny is when you can bond your first destiny.

Thanks for your answer.
Now here's mine :

It's too late. The intention was good (well maybe not good, let's say decent).
Except we already have all destinies capped. For a while. I believe the first one to do so was 2 months after motu came out. If that.

The system could have been decent if it came out at the same time as Epic levels and destinies. Not anymore.

[LadyKoneko]

Wow that was a lot of information... Let's start at the beginning.

Extend Reincarnation system to allow for 38-point builds
Players have been asking for this for a long time.. YEY!

Include Epic Destinies in the TR cycle (with Epic Destiny Past Life Feats)
I personally like the idea, HOWEVER your implantation SUCKS. Which leads into:

Reward you for additional investment in Epic Destinies (with starting ranks after TR)
This is suppose to placate everyone who has maxed out their current destinies? Oh goodie, you get to skip the lower levels that take the least amount of time, granted they can be the most boring in the world. Congrats as usual, you don't think like players. There are players that have spent xp pots, and hours farming rusted blades, von 3/5, and impossible demands.. and you've just screwed them. It personally takes me less time to get to 11 (11 eds, with 5 ranks each would get you 11 as I understand your post) then it does to max farm out EDs. Now I'm talking from more of a elitist attitude. The type of person who is running the content on EE the day it comes out, that's usually the groups I run with.

Looking at it from a newer perspective, someone just starting ED who hasn't invested HOURS and RESOURCES into maxing out my main/alts it's a good idea. And I do like it, the idea of maxing out a whole life: heroic and epic at once is great. its just about 2 years too late. If this had been thought of and implicated WHEN EDs came out, I'm sure a lot of the feedback would be more positive.

Adjust the XP curve in Epic levels for multi-life TR to avoid the dramatic escalating grind
Does this mean you're doing something like 1st life 1.9 million xp to 20, 2nd like 3.2ish, and 3rd 4.4ish? Congrats on Fing up even more. The grind on the 3 (+) lives is already so wonderful! Now you're going to make it so instead of 3 million to get to 25/?? to 28.. its gonna be 4million/??+x? Well then you're really going to have to push out the content. Because as it stands now, with the repeat penalties you can't farm heroic content (most farms that i'm aware of are desert and GH, some in orchard) because now you'll need the xp to just to get cap so you can Epic TR another 10 times. I'm also assuming that E-TR would require more epic Tokens? You know the stuff you haven't been putting in game for the last 2 years? MoTu doesn't do tokens, heck even GH doesn't do tokens, despite being in eberron. I'm sure you've posted on this, but frankly I'm not going to look through these (sarcasm) wonderful (/sarcasm) new forums in search of an answer, but why GH doesn't do tokens/fragments.

Include Iconics in the TR cycle (with Iconic Past Life Feats)/Allow you to TR into and out of Iconics (if you own Iconics)
Congrats on adding classes without adding classes... and increasing the TR cycle even MORE. Why not do racial TR feats too? you know, make the nerfed WF race, a requirement for anyone wanting to go 'completionist'?

Going to skip the section where you cover what is in place and staying the same...

Grants an Epic Destiny Past Life Feat/Feat based on active, maximized Epic Destiny
So this means that to get to 28, which for argument sake let's say its 6 million (3mill to get to 25, and double that to get to 28) you're going to have 2 EDs maxed out. congrats pick one and now you have to redo the other one AND get to 28 again (repeat again 10+ times since you're adding more EDs)

Karmic Bond -The active ED’s experience is now bonded through each ED True Reincarnation going forward
Yey of the 6million xp (see above) you get to 'keep' 2million of it! the extra 4million (let's say you max 2 other EDs, 10 ranks) you get to start at lvl 2 or 3! you know what most experience players can do in less than 2 hours...

Again skipping what is currently in place/working.

You must have a maximized, non-bonded ED to complete this TR..
So if you complete the 11 EDs (or however many you have at the time) and decide that hey I want an extra paladin past life for heal amp for example, you can't do this form of TR, congrats Turbine on road blocking.. but that's an argument for much later... 11 Eds.. can't TR for 1 week.. so at least 3 to 4 months for the hard core players.

Adds 2 build points up to a 38 point build
YEY! you only have to get 10.4 million (4.4ish +6million for 28--see above) for 2 stat points to start at lvl 2/3 (see above).

Iconic True Reincarnation (not coping the entire paragraph)
Congrats on making these 'bank toons' necessary and selling your pre-order. But hey at least it'll be like giving free stones of xp to players, and making it a short life. (insert rant from earlier about creating classes without creating classes)

Reincarnation cooldown timer reduced to 3 days.
Congrats something finally for more experienced/vet/hard core players.. or is that to sell more otto's boxes?

Reincarnation XP curves smoothed to ease penalties for multiple lives.
Something I think all players have been asking for regardless of experience. GREAT JOB.

Now can we talk about quest repeat penalties? Or at least not tying the heroic repeats to the epic ones?

The rest I don't really feel like commenting on, or rambling or venting.. whatever you want to call this.

[Flavilandile]

Thanks for all the responses so far everyone. The team will try to address the details as best we can this early in development. Here are a few more clarifications as we’re reviewing your comments:

• Our intention is that players will be able to earn or buy Epic Destiny TR hearts of wood.
• We’ll continue to add more epic level content so that players have a variety of paths for leveling.
• To engage with Epic Destiny TR, you don’t have to have all destinies maxed out. Character level 28 + one maxed destiny is when you can bond your first destiny.
• We are revisiting XP curves in not only the Heroic levels but also the Epic levels. This would make leveling (and ultimately bonding) a Destiny a faster process compared to the current pace.
• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

We are also making balance changes to compensate for the fact that the system goes into higher levels, and we expect that parts of the design summary will seem less harsh once these details are better understood. We’ll be reading discussion in this thread and will continue to post here with more details as we go (such as details regarding Fate Points, Completionist, and the exact effects of turning in your Epic Destiny xp on your new life).


Thanks for your answers, but you've been dodging the main concern : Wiping of the EDs when we TR.

[Trasak]

I think many people would be ok if two key things would be implemented.

1) Fate points like Tomes are tied to your character. If you epic TR you keep your unlocked fate points, including those from a tome of fate, but do not gain any additional fate points unless you unlock the appropriate number of Epic Destiny ranks.

2) For the love of SANITY, please unlink the destiny you are leveling from the one that is active. No more warforged with a body feat suffering through Grand Master of Flowers.

[Munkenmo]

• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

No it hasn't. You specifically made certain with the last expansion pack, that heroic TR's wouldn't reset Epic Destiny experience.

That decision was made for a good damned reason.

BE CONSISTENT and stick with it.

[fourrumtest]

Thanks for all the responses so far everyone. The team will try to address the details as best we can this early in development. Here are a few more clarifications as we’re reviewing your comments:

• Our intention is that players will be able to earn or buy Epic Destiny TR hearts of wood.
• We’ll continue to add more epic level content so that players have a variety of paths for leveling.
• To engage with Epic Destiny TR, you don’t have to have all destinies maxed out. Character level 28 + one maxed destiny is when you can bond your first destiny.
• We are revisiting XP curves in not only the Heroic levels but also the Epic levels. This would make leveling (and ultimately bonding) a Destiny a faster process compared to the current pace.
• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

We are also making balance changes to compensate for the fact that the system goes into higher levels, and we expect that parts of the design summary will seem less harsh once these details are better understood. We’ll be reading discussion in this thread and will continue to post here with more details as we go (such as details regarding Fate Points, Completionist, and the exact effects of turning in your Epic Destiny xp on your new life).

still not interested. this idea is beyond stupid. i challenge you guys to come up with one thing for me to look forward to in this design.

[Cryohazard]

My reaction to ED xp getting wiped on TRing:

http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/8984/angryscrat.jpg

[Vint]

I'm absolutely astonished that Turbine found a way to take the worst most hated grind in the history of any MMO anywhere and make it more horrible.

Ponderous, fricking ponderous.

I'm so waiting for one of the fanbois to come out and defend this, it'll be glorious.

Between this and Turbine adding the enchantment pass, I don’t know what to think. We all speculate doom, but it really feels that Turbine wants people to just walk away.

[350zguy]

The problem getting XP as I see it. I'm a semi-casual player... I've got 5 TR under my belt or so.

The fact the XP penalty doesn't reset based on time... Quests should have a 1st time bonus, and repetition counters. However the repetition counter should decay at a rate of 1 per week or so. I wouldn't feel like I HAD to skip quests in order to ensure that when I hit epic level, I'll have all the bonus XP waiting.

With the total GUT of DND combat system, the past life feats... are pitiful. +1 to hit... really? It USED to be a full 5% per past life, now it is ... +1, at the middle of the scale +1 == about .5%. So you took a FULL 5% buff, and nerfed it into a sub percent bonus. Why TR now for that, not worth it.

It's the same with damage, spell points, and other "soft targets".

Once you realize the escalating DCs of spells are also an issue, out of range, and only PURE specialists can hit the insanely high DCs needed, you'll have to again, bin the D&D system of spell DCs, and convert to a system similar to what you've done with AC.

So saving throws, and spell DCs will have to go that route to.

Then all those past life feats go into the bin as well, as sub 1% bonuses for millions and millions of XP. (AKA time.)

A few more rotations, and the D20 will only be there because the code is too hard to remove.



If you want to keep past lives attractive, scale the past life feats as you "remember" more of your past life. Or, revamp them to at least get "close" to the same power they had pre-motu.

As far as the EDs. People CAP xp, and save one or two "grind quests" to cap EDs. So they get their 30k per 5 minutes by not having a repeat penalty because they are XP capped, and just solo grind the hell out of one quest once capped. (Or at least that is the fast way.) Again it is the slowly degrading XP system that puts people into these ways of maximizing XP per quest. So they level a certain way, so that EDs can be ground fast by exploiting the non-diminishing returns once they hit XP cap.

I skipped almost every epic quest on this last TR. Now that I'm a TR, I pop my XP pots, and nail level 21 in under an hour. Nail level 22 shortly after, and only do all the epic quests 2x to ensure I get 100% xp from every epic quest once I cap. So I can do any quest any number of times, and always get 100% XP. (But I'm sure I'll pick a few that are "fast and easy" and grind those 8 times a week to loot them out, while working on EDs.)

So, to re-cap....

Decay repeat penalties.
Re-balance past life feats.
First time bonus per difficulty (heroic/epic)
Then the 1st 20 levels is less of a rip off...

Now for the last 8 levels...
Well, more lost XP, MORE xp to recover...
Epic res feats had better be spectacular... As in maybe I can use my TR destiny at level 1. (Talk about a slaughter and a walk thru of lower level quests... But those are a joke already anyway.)


I don't claim to be an expert at this game. I'm posting from my limited play/knowledge of the system. The past life feats stopped being worth it at all with MOTU, anyone still grinding them hasn't realized it.

Fix that system, before you try and create a new one.

[Charononus]

Thanks for all the responses so far everyone. The team will try to address the details as best we can this early in development. Here are a few more clarifications as we’re reviewing your comments:

• Our intention is that players will be able to earn or buy Epic Destiny TR hearts of wood.
• We’ll continue to add more epic level content so that players have a variety of paths for leveling.
• To engage with Epic Destiny TR, you don’t have to have all destinies maxed out. Character level 28 + one maxed destiny is when you can bond your first destiny.
• We are revisiting XP curves in not only the Heroic levels but also the Epic levels. This would make leveling (and ultimately bonding) a Destiny a faster process compared to the current pace.
• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

We are also making balance changes to compensate for the fact that the system goes into higher levels, and we expect that parts of the design summary will seem less harsh once these details are better understood. We’ll be reading discussion in this thread and will continue to post here with more details as we go (such as details regarding Fate Points, Completionist, and the exact effects of turning in your Epic Destiny xp on your new life).
Here's the core of the problem with the horrible decision you've made.

A character that reaches Heroic level 20 will automatically begin to accumulate Epic XP, progressing through Epic levels 21 through 25. XP required to level is identical for all characters, regardless of number of TR's. If a character's Heroic level drops below 20 (for example, through True Reincarnation), Epic advancement and all benefits related to it are suppressed. When the character reaches Heroic level 20 again, they will be returned.

[Cyndder]

Thanks for all the responses so far everyone. The team will try to address the details as best we can this early in development. Here are a few more clarifications as we’re reviewing your comments:

• Our intention is that players will be able to earn or buy Epic Destiny TR hearts of wood.
• We’ll continue to add more epic level content so that players have a variety of paths for leveling.
• To engage with Epic Destiny TR, you don’t have to have all destinies maxed out. Character level 28 + one maxed destiny is when you can bond your first destiny.
• We are revisiting XP curves in not only the Heroic levels but also the Epic levels. This would make leveling (and ultimately bonding) a Destiny a faster process compared to the current pace.
• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

We are also making balance changes to compensate for the fact that the system goes into higher levels, and we expect that parts of the design summary will seem less harsh once these details are better understood. We’ll be reading discussion in this thread and will continue to post here with more details as we go (such as details regarding Fate Points, Completionist, and the exact effects of turning in your Epic Destiny xp on your new life).

First let me thank you for responding.

Second

>>True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life.

Unfortunately your initial implementation of Epic destines did increase power once you returned to epic levels. The design that Turbine engineered is what is causing you to try and put the glue back in the bottle now--unfortunately people don't like to see existing capability taken away(her's you new Mercedes ...12 months later you have to trade it in on a Yugo...we missed the fine print somewhere.)

>>We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

Ok, an 'idea' or two... 1) For every past life you have you get to keep one of your ED's. In addition if/when this 'new game' goes live if you have unlocked all the destines you can choose to keep any three destines you want as an epic destiny completioniest bonus in addition to a +3 fate point tome! Next get rid of the circles and let us move to destinies as our character design wants...not have us grind through useless destines for the class(es) we are not using.

Then we can start talking about epic destines 'free feats' that can be used at level 1. Lastly if you do a heroic TR on a toon it should not 'wipe out' ED efforts from previous lives or the above mentioned ideas.

This is as close to the middle ground as I can think of..short of...don't do it.

[Amoneth]

I know there will be people who will argue this point (as they have mastered the TR system) but it is the truth even if they don't want to admit it.

The current TR system is broken and used only by power gamers who have mastered the system.

What you intended for TR:
1. Players will relevel toons increasing number of low level players and groups.
2. Current players get added power as an incentive.
3. New players to DDO won't leave the game as now they will have. People to group with!

What happened to TR:
1. XP penalty makes TR such a grind people will only do certain quests avoiding all others.
2. Players will max elite streak and not group with new players who haven't mastered the TR grind.
3. TR feats went from adding power to characters so they could be more broadly focused to being required and having epic content balanced on having multiple past lives (example: cast DCs and SR)
4. New players still have no one to group with and vets are even less willing to help them as TR is a massive XP grind.


What you need to do:
1. Remove TR increased XP costs
2. Increase first time Xp bonuses by double to triple, make people WANT to run every quest at least once
3. Add bonus Xprts. For grouping with new players, maybe 25% make people want new accounts in there group, will this also be exploited? Yes, but what isn't?
4. Make the completionist feat FREE!!!!
5. Make tring fun and not a carefully planned grind with select quests and guildes!




P.S. I worked my nay nays off maxing out every ED, i expect a PL feat for ALL of them when epic TR!

Do us all a favour and apply to Turbine for a job, this is spot on!

[QuantumFX]

I have to say calling this an "advantage" is a steaming pile of nonesene. Trading in Millions of XP for thousands . . . what kind of "advantage" is this?

Here’s the best I could come up with:
If you had all the destinies locked, you could then chase after all the heroic PLs by continually restarting at level 12.

[Citzen_Gkar]

• To engage with Epic Destiny TR, you don’t have to have all destinies maxed out. Character level 28 + one maxed destiny is when you can bond your first destiny.
• We are revisiting XP curves in not only the Heroic levels but also the Epic levels. This would make leveling (and ultimately bonding) a Destiny a faster process compared to the current pace.
• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

We are also making balance changes to compensate for the fact that the system goes into higher levels, and we expect that parts of the design summary will seem less harsh once these details are better understood. We’ll be reading discussion in this thread and will continue to post here with more details as we go (such as details regarding Fate Points, Completionist, and the exact effects of turning in your Epic Destiny xp on your new life).

Sometimes it is really clear that most devs don't play the game.


http://i665.photobucket.com/albums/vv16/Tuvya/bc387338-9e0b-4d4d-a4cf-257b753c75f.jpg (http://s665.photobucket.com/user/Tuvya/media/bc387338-9e0b-4d4d-a4cf-257b753c75f.jpg.html)

[eonfreon]

Thanks for all the responses so far everyone. The team will try to address the details as best we can this early in development. Here are a few more clarifications as we’re reviewing your comments:

• Our intention is that players will be able to earn or buy Epic Destiny TR hearts of wood.
• We’ll continue to add more epic level content so that players have a variety of paths for leveling.
• To engage with Epic Destiny TR, you don’t have to have all destinies maxed out. Character level 28 + one maxed destiny is when you can bond your first destiny.
• We are revisiting XP curves in not only the Heroic levels but also the Epic levels. This would make leveling (and ultimately bonding) a Destiny a faster process compared to the current pace.
• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

We are also making balance changes to compensate for the fact that the system goes into higher levels, and we expect that parts of the design summary will seem less harsh once these details are better understood. We’ll be reading discussion in this thread and will continue to post here with more details as we go (such as details regarding Fate Points, Completionist, and the exact effects of turning in your Epic Destiny xp on your new life).

Knowing details about Fate Points would go a long way to evaluating your plans. Because the only point in maxing out useless Destinies (other than OCD) is to gain those Fate Points in the first place. Allowing them to carry over so that I don't have to grind out useless EDs again will go a long way to making the system seem better.

My main problem with your asserting that "True Reincarnation has always been about givinh up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life" is that it is not completely true. Currently I can do a heroic TR, re-level to 20, and access all my EDs.

Thus to make your statement true you have to change the rules. It would be one thing to add the Epic TR and create the rules for it, as bad as it may be considered by the players, but it's yet another thing to change the rules of heroic TR just to make it conform to your latest "vision". Because all I can see is the Devs taking the lazy way out and instead of creating new content they are wiping away progress, to create new "content".

There is no reason to make people re-grind all they've done just to pad your game's content. You can't take the majority of the game you had created by default (grinding EDs since that's the end-game) and invalidate it for players to progress.

Well, you can, but it makes for a frustrating game experience.

[eonfreon]

EDIT: Double Post. Geez, your website is a piece of junk.
BTW your website really makes it hard to have a discussion since it keeps logging me out. If I wasn't now in the habit of copy/pasting my posts I would have given up a long time ago.

[moops]

Holt sh*it.

You really are trying to get people to quit DDO.

Were you thinking that all of us not playing atm because we are waiting to see enhancement pass before putting more time into an alt, would come back and hurry up and TR?

This is just crazy. My cleric is borked, but has max Destiny xp ( mind you, not ground out in Rusted Blades..but actually leading raids. running quests and pugging ) And I am going to lose all this if I wait to TR til I see the new Alpha and system?

I think I'll just keep taking a break.

[Teh_Troll]

Thanks for all the responses so far everyone. The team will try to address the details as best we can this early in development. Here are a few more clarifications as we’re reviewing your comments:

• Our intention is that players will be able to earn or buy Epic Destiny TR hearts of wood.
• We’ll continue to add more epic level content so that players have a variety of paths for leveling.
• To engage with Epic Destiny TR, you don’t have to have all destinies maxed out. Character level 28 + one maxed destiny is when you can bond your first destiny.
• We are revisiting XP curves in not only the Heroic levels but also the Epic levels. This would make leveling (and ultimately bonding) a Destiny a faster process compared to the current pace.
• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

We are also making balance changes to compensate for the fact that the system goes into higher levels, and we expect that parts of the design summary will seem less harsh once these details are better understood. We’ll be reading discussion in this thread and will continue to post here with more details as we go (such as details regarding Fate Points, Completionist, and the exact effects of turning in your Epic Destiny xp on your new life).

Giving up ED XP is not acceptable for ANYTHING.

Keep up with this foolishness and many will never TR again.

You do not understand your players and you game if you think otherwise.

This is an Xbox level mistake.

[SilkofDrasnia]

Thanks for all the responses so far everyone. The team will try to address the details as best we can this early in development. Here are a few more clarifications as we’re reviewing your comments:

• Our intention is that players will be able to earn or buy Epic Destiny TR hearts of wood.
• We’ll continue to add more epic level content so that players have a variety of paths for leveling.
• To engage with Epic Destiny TR, you don’t have to have all destinies maxed out. Character level 28 + one maxed destiny is when you can bond your first destiny.
• We are revisiting XP curves in not only the Heroic levels but also the Epic levels. This would make leveling (and ultimately bonding) a Destiny a faster process compared to the current pace.
• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

We are also making balance changes to compensate for the fact that the system goes into higher levels, and we expect that parts of the design summary will seem less harsh once these details are better understood. We’ll be reading discussion in this thread and will continue to post here with more details as we go (such as details regarding Fate Points, Completionist, and the exact effects of turning in your Epic Destiny xp on your new life).

If you do not allow those that have farmed (when I say farmed I don't mean ran rusted blades over and over and over when it was giving high XP as some of us TRed maxed a destiny or 2 TRed again etc) Epic Destinies and have more than one capped with others at like at lvl 4 to bond all this and force us to lose this when we do go to bond ONE you are right out bending us forward, spreading out our legs and giving us a big huge kick in the nuts.

I won't even think of those that put rl cash into pots and what not....

Dunno how it can be any clearer.

I mean why not just delete all our toons and make us all start over with first lifers!

Wouldn't that be grand!!!!!!!

[My2Cents]

I've played DDO since '09 and have yet to TR. While I admit TRing once or twice to get a few additional points has an appeal to it, I've just seen it as a repeat of the grind, only harder.

While I appreciate more content to provide alternate levelling paths, please don't forget those of us who have chosen to maximize their playing experience without TRing.

Or is it the designers intention that everyone follow the TR path? If so, please revisit the Bravery Bonus idea and the experience requirements that bring it about, because the current implementation of Bravery Bonus really sets players apart in the LFM/grouping mechanism.

If there were some way that TRing required somewhat less extensive experience gain and any TR challenge was provided by something more than just larger experience requirements, I think it would make for a richer, more enjoyable and more attractive playstyle pathway for me and I'm sure for others.

[Grubbby]

I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. I've maxed or nearly maxed all destinys on all of my active toons, and that leaves me way over invested for using ED TR's in the new system. If I were a newish player and knew the rules going in, this could be attractive.

Sitting with near max destinys on 5 or 6 toons this seems pretty punitive. If I were sitting with one or two max destinies it would look a lot different.

A couple of points though.

1: There have been a lot of complaints that we spend all of our time in non-optimal destinies. This changes in the new system, out of the 6+ million XP for a given new ED TR cycle, you will most likely be in your best destiny except for the 1.9 Million it takes to cap the destiny you are going to bond. This will be a dash to 28, not a dash to max your destinies. I'll be loosing sense weakness as a twist on my monk and draconic burst twist on my wizzy for a few cycles, but I'll be running in my best destiny 2/3's of the time now, and in all the tougher content.

2: The final life grind to get your twists will be considerably easier than the first time around for two reasons. One, you will have 1 or more bonded destinies that do not need to be farmed, and start with the fate points from those destinies. And second, you can grind it exactly the same way you did the first life. In order to reach MAX XP, you will need to be level 26 just like you need to be 23 to max xp today with a cap at 25. At level 26 you get a 10% penalty running impossible demands on hard. A greater Epic Tome of Learning adds 10% to your xp, so they offset. It means running hard instead of normal, but you will be level 26 instead of 23 or 24 and have slightly better gear.

I'm not fond of the grind here, but it will be pretty much the same grind as the first time I leveled my destinies minus the time to level my bonded destinies.

I'm not happy that I spent a lot of time maxing destinies on a handful of toons and now I get a few of the easy bubbles off my first TR cycle as a reward. But its not as bad as it sounds.

One thought I had was that if they make the Epic Advantage level a high water mark, so that a toon that has capped destinies would get a 55 Bubble Head Start on EVERY TR cycle, not just the next one... I'd be a lot less irritated..

[AnubisPrime]

Thanks for all this info. It's much to digest.

I was talking it over with a guildie, and one concern is that as the XP curve is revisited, and it will be easier to TR (Heroic)--it will sort of feel like a kick in the chops to those completionists and multiple TR folks who spent the greater part of a few years doing such.

It's progress and "moving forward", but it may be prudent to give at least a symbolic reward to those vets and founders whom ground-out the XP and TR'd before this new change takes effect. No, I'm not discounting the boost to VIP XP, the Founder's Helm, Boots, and I do appreciate the exclusive forum avatars.

Maybe an automatic XP boost if an epic TR is done, or a free "Been Through Death and Back" feat for those who TR'd prior to the change X many times, or those who are current completionists.

In this way, you then bring new people into a robust system of character development, and you satisfy some of the concerns of those who have been around for years (or the start of it all) by rewarding them with something that is not necessarily game breaking.

I see myself doing the Epic TRs on my TR/completionist character. It might be cool to put him through the Iconic wringer a few times :).

My other characters may do one or two of these depending on the benefit of the epic past life feats.

All this of course depends on what the reality of it is...

[Pandir]

• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.


I can actually see that for Epic Destiny TR, you want to get the Destiny TR Bonus you give up your Destiny XP.
I see absolutely no point in wiping the Destiny Xp on a heroic TR, you give up your heroic life so that should be the only thing altered.

[Lauf]

It is true that in its core, TRing is about getting a small bonus in exchange for giving up your current life, and while I understand the reasoning behind your suggested course of action, taking things away from players without giving something back hardly seems like the right approach to take.

if I could recommend a different approach, one that somehow balances what you the devs are trying to do with something that's still fair to the player base, I'd suggest that on an epic TR, the epic destiny that is currently bound, maxed and active would reset, granting the character the appropriate epic destiny past life, without resetting the other destinies.
that way players would still need to level through epic levels to 28 before a TR, and couldn't get more than 1 ED past life per TR, and yet would not lose their hard earned progress.

the "would count towards heroic ranks" bonus is s not a worthy compensation, so I would do away with that.

would this make life easier on players who've maxed out more than 1 destiny? perhaps. but deservedly so. they've worked hard to earn it.

[Citzen_Gkar]

Ok, I think this could work IF ALL OF THE ITEMS BELOW were implemented:

- you grandfathered out all the old grinding by saying that any maxed out ED as of the day U20 hits is automatically bonded
- unbonded unlocked EDs stay unlocked, even if all the XP itself is lost
- fate points are not lost on TR or ETR

[MarcusCleardawn]

Seems to me that the New Epic TR requires the character to have a "new" maximized Epic Destiny. So if I were a lvl 5 Dreadnaught in the previous life, I'd have maximize a new Epic Destiny to do an Epic TR.

"Grants a Class Past Life Feat (same as Heroic TR)" I'm pretty sure this was not stated correctly. Taken literally, it would mean that an Epic TR gets a double shot of the same Class Past Life Feat, e.g. If I level up my 28 point build cleric to level 28 and do an Epic TR, my next life has Past Life Cleric twice and an Past Life Epic Cleric Feat. Maybe that's intended, but I suspect that the character in my example is intended to get only 1 Past Life Cleric and 1 Past Life Epic Cleric Feat.

"Epic Advantage"
Lame and poorly conceived.
1) The Return on investment is pathetic. 28 million for little more than 1 million.
2) Jumping up early levels is bad.

I like to TR. I TR to try different styles of play and learn other aspects of the game. So I've maxed all the Destinies, when I turn, I gain 55 Heroic ranks, or starting at level 11. That's pretty darned deep in the learning curve. This is a bad idea, because, depriving me of those learning experiences early on means that I can really make a complete futz of my build. People expect you to have some idea of what you're doing by that level.

Proposed Solution: Turn "Heroic Advantage" into an experience stone worth 1 million experience, bound to character, usable any time between level 1 and level X. Please don't deprive us of the early learning opportunities.


1. Reincarnation cooldown: Fine with me. I can't grind out a life in 3 days, but more power to those that choose to.
2. Smoothing the curves: Sure, but I think smoothing the xp rewards from quests makes more sense. It's sad to me that in the area where you have the most to grind 18+ quests are among the least xp efficient.
3. Giving Iconics access to the reincarnation system: Great.

How this will impact my gameplay...
Negatively. I think it's lame to take away Epic Destiny experience after we've gotten used to it, but I'll deal. Not to say I won't be bitter about it since I earned my Epic Destinies without using Rusted Blades. The deal breaker for me is the "Epic Advantage." I suppose I might burn a life "doubling up" to a life that I all ready know fairly well to get rid of Epic Advantage so that I can play my TR lives from the beginning, but that really guts the motivation for me. I like to TR into new things to for want of a better description "be a noob." I like learning the new playstyle. Having to go back and redo a life I've all ready mastered just so I can be a noob on something new seems a high price to pay.

It's your world, I just help pay for it. But honestly I expect that this "new system" however you ultimately decide to implement it, will have unintended and unexpected errors which will interact with the other errors and changes to once again drive some of us to frustration.

Was anyone complaining about the TR system? Other than allowing iconics to participate and the lack of good experience quests toward the end?

Seems to me a solution, bound to cause problems, in search of a problem.

[Charononus]

Ok, I think this could work IF ALL OF THE ITEMS BELOW were implemented:

- you grandfathered out all the old grinding by saying that any maxed out ED as of the day U20 hits is automatically bonded
- unbonded unlocked EDs stay unlocked, even if all the XP itself is lost
- fate points are not lost on TR or ETR

This would work, give us a grandfather option, otherwise you're spitting in our faces.

[Deadlock]

You missed the part where all ED is lost if you use a standard TR.

And that is the crux of the issue that I see if they go ahead with it.

Heroic TR should be exactly as it is right now, your ED XP is untouched and you gain your Heroic Past Life Feats. No "advantage" or whatever.
Epic TR you start picking up your Epic Destiny Past Life Feats and you only retain your "bonded" ED Levels. You get the "advantage" of additional ranks based on your total ED Levels when you TR'd.

I can work with that as a system, it's optional, and it has a cost that you understand from the outset. Wiping out all ED XP on a Heroic TR would be a huge mistake.

I would be tempted to add to that you can only Epic TR into an Iconic Hero, but that's just me.

Recalculating Fate Points based on your "current" Destinies each life I don't have an issue with either, I'll just work around it.

[Shmuel]

Overall, this system looks like it has some potential. I, for one, am anxious to hear the details before passing a judgement. However, I would offer a couple suggestions based n what I understand of this and previous comments. Here is the first one. I'll post others as I flesh them out in my mind.

I understand the "epic advantage" is an attempt to mitigate the loss of destiny xp on epic reincarnation, but I do not think it is enough to counter the legitimate concerns and some of the pointless anger some have expressed here. As I read it, each unbonded epic destiny level will translate into a 1 rank bonus of xp for the new life. The problem here is amounts.
Example:
there are 55 available epic destiny levels, totaling 19 million xp. If someone had all destinies maxed and epic tr'ed, that would start them on rank 55, or the end of level 11. On a multi-tr toon, under the current system, this translates into about 1.1 million xp, or about 6% of the xp they lost. Especially with early leveling being so easy compared to later game leveling (I usually go from 1-3 in 30 minutes running only 1 quest- kobolds new ringleader), this is NOT a very big benefit for a huge xp loss.
Suggestion:
Make it 2 ranks per epic destiny level xp lost, essentially bringing someone to level 20 immediately on TR if they have all epic destinies maxed. You woudl still be losing close to 80% of the xp you lost, but it would be a bit easier to swallow.

[HalfORCastrator]

Giving up ED XP is not acceptable for ANYTHING.

Keep up with this foolishness and many will never TR again.

You do not understand your players and you game if you think otherwise.

This is an Xbox level mistake.
^ This.

There's no justification for losing ED xp during heroic TRing, especially not after all this time people have spent on their characters. (Though making the destiny xp loss for heroic xp gain an option is a good idea.)

On the other hand, for epic TRing, the only way I could see losing ED xp as justifiable is if earned Fate Points stuck around, with the max Fate Points allowed increasing to the point where we can get 4/4/4 in twists and get one more Point every epic TR.

[oweieie]

Awful.

Add to the game, stop screwing up what you have.

[Tyrande]

Thanks for all the responses so far everyone. The team will try to address the details as best we can this early in development. [...]
• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

True. What is more to gain when you have gained every level and every destiny and every twist? D&D is unlimited and I think DDO should be.

As for destiny feats, here are some of my ideas:

Past Life: Magister: You were a Magister in an epic past life. You occasionally find yourself the urge to have acquired more information from good arcane spell books. You now have +5 DC, +5 Spell Penetration, +50 Negative Spell Power and have learnt the Epic Spell Seed: Dispel

Past Life: Draconic Incarnation: You were a Draconic Incarnate in an epic past life. You occasionally find yourself dreaming of giving bad breath to others. You now have +50 base Spell Power from of the color of your draconic heritage and also acquired the Epic Spell Seed: Energy

Past Life: Fate Singer:You were a Fate Singer in an epic past life. You occasionally find yourselves inspiring people to do the best in their jobs. You now have +50 Sonic Spell Power and all your crowd control spells and songs are double(?) in length. (*spells stack with extend metamagic feat)

Past Life: Shadowdancer:You were a Shadowdancer in an epic past life. People have a hard to time keep track of you and instead found your shadows. You now have an additional +5 to your Assassinate DC; and can cast the special Shadow Training IV dimension door 5 times per rest (without using spell points), 3 minutes cool down.

Past Life: Grandmaster of Flowers:You were a Grandmaster of Flowers in an epic past life. You were a Ki Master and occasionally you find yourselves aware of the free flow of Ki in your body. You now have +50 base Force Spell Power and +50 additional Ki upon resting.

Past Life: Exalted Angel:You were an exalted angel in an epic past life. You occasionally found yourselves judging and smiting evil. You now have +50 base Light Spell Power and also acquired the Epic Spell Seed: Heal.

Past Life: Unyielding Sentinel:You were an unyielding sentinel in an epic past life. You occasionally dream of providing stunts and shield other people from hurting. You now have +50 Positive Spell Power and also acquired the Epic Spell Seed: Ward.

Past Life: Legendary Dreadnought:You were a legendary dreadnought in an epic past life. You occasionally dream of blitzing through a full dungeon leaving a bloody trail. You now have +5 Tactical DC to your tactical skills (stun, trip, sunder) and +5 damage with your melee weapons

Past Life: Shiradi Champion:You were a Shiradi Champion in an epic past life. You thought you were a fey Eladrin in your dreams and excel in ranged attacks. You gained +5 ranged damage and +5 untyped spell damage per cast. Additionally, you gained the Epic Spell Seed: Reflect.

Past Life: Fury of the Wild:You were a barbaric wild folk in an epic past life. You occasionally found yourselves behave wildly and dream about masters of pain delivery and reception. Every hit you inflict a shaken effect and enemies have a random 10%(?) chance of frozen in place in awe of your prowess.

Past Life: Primal Avatar:You were a primal avatar in an epic past life. You occasionally found yourselves have the urge to play around with fury animals and imagined yourselves being wrapped in green natural goodness. Any pets, summons, hireling you have 15% alacrity and +5 levels. You also gained the Epic Spell Seed: Life.



We are also making balance changes to compensate for the fact that the system goes into higher levels, and we expect that parts of the design summary will seem less harsh once these details are better understood. We’ll be reading discussion in this thread and will continue to post here with more details as we go (such as details regarding Fate Points, Completionist, and the exact effects of turning in your Epic Destiny xp on your new life).

Epic Destiny Completionist: +2 to every skills, Ability (stat points), DR, PRR, Doublestrike, Spell Power that does not require a feat like regular heroic completionist and is an automatic built-in feat once the conditions are met. Your TR wings are now golden in color rather than white for regular TR people. Requires: Every Bond Epic Destiny Past Life. New Destinies when released will automatically turned off Epic Destiny Completionist from your feats list.

[slarden]

Thanks for all the responses so far everyone. The team will try to address the details as best we can this early in development. Here are a few more clarifications as we’re reviewing your comments:

• Our intention is that players will be able to earn or buy Epic Destiny TR hearts of wood.
• We’ll continue to add more epic level content so that players have a variety of paths for leveling.
• To engage with Epic Destiny TR, you don’t have to have all destinies maxed out. Character level 28 + one maxed destiny is when you can bond your first destiny.
• We are revisiting XP curves in not only the Heroic levels but also the Epic levels. This would make leveling (and ultimately bonding) a Destiny a faster process compared to the current pace.
• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

We are also making balance changes to compensate for the fact that the system goes into higher levels, and we expect that parts of the design summary will seem less harsh once these details are better understood. We’ll be reading discussion in this thread and will continue to post here with more details as we go (such as details regarding Fate Points, Completionist, and the exact effects of turning in your Epic Destiny xp on your new life).

In my main character, I maxed out every epic destiny. Does this mean when I do epic TR I effectively get no benefit except for my current destiny? I thought if I epic TR'd I would get credit for every destiny I maxed out rather than just one.

I think you should revisit that aspect of the epic TR. It's fine starting over with no ED experience, I just want to get credit for the epic destinies I already capped out.

Overall the system looks fun, but it seems like those of that maxed our destinies won't get any benefit for doing so.

[bibimbap]

For what it's worth there are some great ideas in this thread, but loosing all my ED xp would make me as well as my guild leave (lv 90+ guild on thelanis, The Ministry of Destruction) and we are one of the most active guilds out there.

I think your idea has some potential i.e. Epic Past Lives and what not, but man... we spent countless hours working on these characters, and it's very frustrating to loose everything we worked for.

[Abilbo]

Glin,

This month you need to roll up a character on a live server, maybe a bladeforged to make it quicker, play the game and grind a full set of ed's. Then imagine losing all that. This shows a severe disconnect between your players and the producers.

I think that disconnect happened along time ago. I have tried to get several people I know that play MMO's to join this game, but all have come up with the same answer in the end, NOBODY who has TR'd multiple times wants to play with new players. Sadly, this is true, because I am one of those people who don't want new players in my groups, because their is a bigger chance of failure than success with players who haven't done the grind, and don't understand their limitations. I put up LFM's and write in the description "know what con means" and then accept players, at level 15-18 with less than 200 health, and I just kick them from the group.. Why would I want to waste my time doing the quest with a player I know is going to die, the first fight we get into? If the Producers/Developers were more in tune with the actual game play they would notice that the actual number of LFM's up decreases on a monthly basis, to where there are times when I log in, there are NO groups looking for more players, of the level range of my characters.

I am a multiple TR, VIP member who thinks that almost everything in the original post is a bad idea.

Changes happen to the game, its what MMO's do, some changes are good, some not always so. But ED EXP was set up with the intent, that when you TR you would not lose your ED EXP, if it had been set up originally to wipe EXP when you TR, nobody would have spent the time doing the grind, if they knew that they would lose it, when they TR.

A very simple solution would be to make a Heroic TR not effect your ED EXP, and when you do a Epic TR, then you start a level 20, lose all your ED EXP and grind up to 28 again. You wouldn't effect your completionist status, because EPIC levels don't effect your character class anyway. Those players who want to do the grind from 20-28 multiple times to gain the PL Feats from ED's, will be able to do so. It would still take a bit of time, as the exp needed to go from 20-28 will far exceed what is needed to go from 1-20 even as a multiple TR.

The goal of any MMO is to make money. Whether its a FTP or PTP the concept is the same, make money. In DDO it seems to me that the players who are going to spend the most money in the game are those that TR their characters, because the longer you play, the more likely you are to spend money. I saw NOTHING in the original post that seemed like a benefit for those that are willing to TR over and over and over and over. I took a break from the TR Grind, and ground out the exp in my ED's so that when my character hit level 20, I could use the ED's the way i wanted to, to learn that if i continue to TR I will have to grind out that EXP all over, is frustrating and saddening.

I have to say that at this point, I am glad that I did not pre-order the new expansion, because if update 20 is a hint of things to come, then I don't see much of a future in this game.

Losing 21 million exp, to gain 55 heroic ranks, is the most absurd thing that I have seen any developer in any MMO that I have ever played suggest.

[Deadlock]

Glin,

This month you need to roll up a character on a live server, maybe a bladeforged to make it quicker, play the game and grind a full set of ed's. Then imagine losing all that. This shows a severe disconnect between your players and the producers.

That's not really the issue though. At the moment, we have ED's capped or we don't and we have maximum Fate Points or we don't. There's nothing saying that you have to cap every destiny, I have on a couple of my guys and deliberately not on others.

Choosing to Epic TR and losing your unbonded destinies I don't have an issue with, it's a choice you can exercise or not.

Doing a Heroic TR and losing your unbonded destinies that is a ridiculously bad idea. My main is a triple completionist so I don't need anything from Heroic TRing, and even I can see how bad an idea this is.

Having the two separate TR systems complimenting one another is a great addition for people who are finished with the TRing and choose to do some Epic TRing.

[HalfORCastrator]

hanges happen to the game, its what MMO's do, some changes are good, some not always so. But ED EXP was set up with the intent, that when you TR you would not lose your ED EXP, if it had been set up originally to wipe EXP when you TR, nobody would have spent the time doing the grind, if they knew that they would lose it, when they TR.
They originally wanted destiny xp to go back to zero when TRing. Due to everyone *****ing it was changed.

[Deadlock]

Thanks for all the responses so far everyone. The team will try to address the details as best we can this early in development.

Best to make some simple design changes right away, it'll cost you orders of magnitude more in time and expense later.

Only flaw with the system I can see is the Heroic TR wiping out ED XP.

[Rathic]

you need to be able to apply exp to a destiny you are no currentlyt utilizing. period. exp should never be thrown away just because you need your character to be effective

[SirValentine]

Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR.


So...somebody with only one destiny bonds it and loses nothing? Whereas somebody with 11 destinies bonds 1 and loses 10 of them? Wow. Talk about punishing success. You need to rethink that.

And, isn't that completely backwards? The one kept, it's the one that you're supposedly TRing out of? (I.e., getting the destiny past life for?)

The overall "goals" sounded fine, but the devil is in your details.

[TBot1234]

Ok, I think this could work IF ALL OF THE ITEMS BELOW were implemented:

- you grandfathered out all the old grinding by saying that any maxed out ED as of the day U20 hits is automatically bonded
- unbonded unlocked EDs stay unlocked, even if all the XP itself is lost
- fate points are not lost on TR or ETR

I'd like time to give it more thought, but something like the above could make this workable. Anything that causes me to lose things I have already achieved would be too painful to swallow.

I am on life 11 of a completionist path. I have maxxed out around half of the EDs. To lose EDs upon TRing would not be something I would be willing to do. I.e., I am pretty sure that would be the end of my enjoyment for the game.

Another idea: why not make Epic TR similar to Heroic TR: leave EDs out of it altogether. Work your way to end of level 28. TR. Get a epic past-life feat, then run from level 20 to 28 again. EDs could remain unaffected, or at worse maybe you would need to re-earn just 1 ED before TR'ing again?

I am seriously disappointed with this information from Turbine today, even though it is still early on and incomplete.

[SirValentine]

Choosing to Epic TR and losing your unbonded destinies I don't have an issue with, it's a choice you can exercise or not.


That would be great argument if they were introducing this "TR" system at the same time as the ED system.

Yanking the rug out from under us by completely changing the way it works AFTER we put months of playing (and paying) into leveling up our EDs is just screwing over their customers.

Also, I personally thought the preservation of EDs was a very nice feature. You could work on them a bit here, a bit there, TR, and then work on them some more.

If I am a Fighter20 and TR, I lose all that FIGHTER XP, and get a Fighter past life, but I don't lose anything Wizard-related at all. If they want to have ED TRing, you should lose only the ONE ED you are TRing, not unrelated ones.

[Deadlock]

Between this and Turbine adding the enchantment pass, I don’t know what to think. We all speculate doom, but it really feels that Turbine wants people to just walk away.

Yeah, you can't be genuinely naive enough to actually believe that though, do you? A company has a desire to lose it's customers, it's revenue and be forced to dismiss all it's employees? You know many companies who work that way?

I see it that they are trying to add something to game to help it attract more players, by making some of the systems more transparent in the case of the enhancements, and adding additional playability to the end-game in the Epic TRing.

Now they haven't got either of these systems perfect from what I've seen and I've spent a lot of time looking, but neither are they a million miles from the mark. People actually asking them to abandon however many man-years of design and development in the new enhancements are kidding themselves. It's a lot easier to pull it back on-track with some straight forward changes that make it interesting and fun again, while actually adding more build variety. The Epic TRing just needs to leave Heroic TRing alone and make it clear Epic TRing is optional. Being able to Epic TR into a level 15 (+advantage ranks) of an Iconic is a nice idea that I don't anyone else had thought of, so lets give them credit for that. Gaining Epic Destiny Past Life Feats, Iconic Hero Past Life Feats and Epic Completionist Feats are also good options - so long as they are all auto-granted Feats and they revise the current Completionist Feat to be auto-granted too.

What they can't afford to do in a competitive marketplace is say that nothing will ever change and only cater for the same closed player base, which will inevitably shrink through natural causes over time.

[SirValentine]

I thought if I epic TR'd I would get credit for every destiny I maxed out rather than just one.

I think you should revisit that aspect of the epic TR. It's fine starting over with no ED experience, I just want to get credit for the epic destinies I already capped out.


That would make more sense. If I capped it and lost it, I should get the Past Life for it. Not lose 11 and get 1.

[kain741]

• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life.


Yes, this is true. I've TR'd many times to get this increased power. And if you would have come a year ago with this in mind, I would have called it a great idea. Then I could have planned for it...built for it. I built my completionist for 21 lives...and he is there. I've run countless hours of Impossible demands to cap out and be able to twist in needed abilities. Would these ED PL's make my toon stronger? I can only assume. Would I have sank cash into pots...hours into grinding ED's that I knowling was going to lose? Never! The issue isn't that are sacrificing to get stronger...we do that every life. The problem is that we could have avoided it with proper communication. If I was just sacrificing 1 ED for the PL, I would be ok...if you want me to sacrifice 11 for 1 PL, you are crazy. Give me 12 ED PL's and I'll TR again. Otherwise I will never TR another toon I have done ED work on...and that is all of them.
Side note: Are Iconic's going to be required for completionist feat? If I lose my feat because I am forced to TR into another class and thus lose all my ED progress, I simply will not play.

[kwyjibo_lol]

Ok so you want us to play this new mechanic that involves an ED wipe. Wow some ideas are so borne of fail it has to be done with that being the primary objective. I mean the rewards would have to enormous to forgo that much xp.

Will the epic tr grant those feats during heroic levelling?

Will epic tr's and/or Iconic past lives be required to gain completionist?

[Shmuel]

That would be great argument if they were introducing this "TR" system at the same time as the ED system.

Yanking the rug out from under us by completely changing the way it works AFTER we put months of playing (and paying) into leveling up our EDs is just screwing over their customers.

Also, I personally thought the preservation of EDs was a very nice feature. You could work on them a bit here, a bit there, TR, and then work on them some more.

If I am a Fighter20 and TR, I lose all that FIGHTER XP, and get a Fighter past life, but I don't lose anything Wizard-related at all. If they want to have ED TRing, you should lose only the ONE ED you are TRing, not unrelated ones.

You are quite right. The problem with this system is in its initial implementation. If they could simply find a way to lock in all epic destinies that you haev capped out at the time of u20s release, so that if you epic tr'ed people who have all destinies capped out woudl not lose 16b million xp, that would be fine. It could be that you still need to level from 1-28 for each destiny feat you get, and you only can get one per epic tr, but don't have to sacrifice all that people have worked and paid quite a lot to accomplish.

[Sonos]

We need clarification now rather than later.

I am on my 14th life and have ground out 2 cirlcles: melee and specialist and am maxing out the rest for fate points. If I have to regrind them after... I think I will probably just give the game up to be honest. I'm not for going backwards on progress, I don't think it's very considerate given that the ED grind has been made to be so boring. To remove it and have to regrind every time to max out fate points does not make the game any sexier, it makes it ugly and boring.

I love the game, but this would be my line in the sand, because of the sheer ridiculousness and total lack of respect of people's time and money.

If in fact the wording is being misinterpreted, awesome, I look forward to the new system, otherwise it's time to stick a fork in it.

[Deadlock]

That would be great argument if they were introducing this "TR" system at the same time as the ED system.

Yanking the rug out from under us by completely changing the way it works AFTER we put months of playing (and paying) into leveling up our EDs is just screwing over their customers.

Also, I personally thought the preservation of EDs was a very nice feature. You could work on them a bit here, a bit there, TR, and then work on them some more.

If I am a Fighter20 and TR, I lose all that FIGHTER XP, and get a Fighter past life, but I don't lose anything Wizard-related at all. If they want to have ED TRing, you should lose only the ONE ED you are TRing, not unrelated ones.

Without the benefit of a time machine, that's not going to happen.

I've already invested 21,780,000 XP in capping out all of my destines, so Epic TRing will affect me as much as it will you.

I don't agree with your comparison, a closer one would be:
1. You Heroic TR and you lose all of your Heroic XP, you gain a Heroic Past Life Feat.
2. You do this for every Class and you gain the Completionist Feat at level 3 (which should be auto-granted, but we'll not go into that).

Compared to what I think most people are in agreement on:
1. You Epic TR and you lose your Epic XP and any "unbonded" Epic Destiny XP, you gain an Epic Destiny Past Life Feat.
2. You do this for every Epic Destiny and you gain the Epic Completionist at level 20 (which should be auto-granted).

That works fine as a system. It's purely optional and the cost is "reasonable".

For those of us who have their destines capped and want to Epic TR, the best solution is to Epic TR into an Iconic Hero, which will initially start at 15, then be bumped up to 20 or 20+ after gaining 55 ranks, and do this a couple of times to lock in some more Destinies.

The flaw in the design is having Heroic TR affect your ED at all. The way Heroic TR is at the moment works well, I completely agree with you on that, so there is absolutely no need to screw with something that works.

[Charononus]

Yeah, you can't be genuinely naive enough to actually believe that though, do you? A company has a desire to lose it's customers, it's revenue and be forced to dismiss all it's employees? You know many companies who work that way?


My father in law is a truck driver for a company, a few years ago his former employer was bought out, the new owner was upfront at least and told them that they were going to drive it into the ground for a tax write off for that year so start looking for new jobs. It's rare, involves some ethically questionable tax forms, but it does happen.

[oradafu]

• Our intention is that players will be able to earn or buy Epic Destiny TR hearts of wood.

Hopefully earned Epic Destiny TR Hearts will be no more complicated than the current TR Hearts. However, I suspect it will contain some god-awful ingredient to get, such as Chattering Rings, Epic Raid Tokens or Commendations of Heroism or some other hard to get no always dropping item.


• We’ll continue to add more epic level content so that players have a variety of paths for leveling.

I'm suggesting once again that adjusting the XP in upper heroic quests (Amarth, House C, MOTU side quests) will be an easy way to padding some XP for both TRs and Epic players. It will also give early Epic players an incentive to play with upper Heroic players, since there's the artificial segregation of the two parties because level 18 and 19 players cannot enter any Epic quests.


• To engage with Epic Destiny TR, you don’t have to have all destinies maxed out. Character level 28 + one maxed destiny is when you can bond your first destiny.

Did this just change in the last few hours. Because Glin stated "You must have a maximized, non-bonded ED to complete this (Epic) TR". As can be seen here:


Epic Destiny True Reincarnation



Can be taken at Level Cap (Level 28 with Shadowfell Conspiracy)
Grants an Epic Destiny Past Life Feat

Feat based on active, maximized Epic Destiny


Karmic Bond -The active ED’s experience is now bonded through each ED True Reincarnation going forward
Grants a Class Past Life Feat (same as Heroic TR)
You must have a maximized, non-bonded ED to complete this TR
Adds 2 build points up to a 38 point build




So which is it? Is it only a maxed ED? Or is it a maxed ED plus a maxed unbonded ED?


• We are revisiting XP curves in not only the Heroic levels but also the Epic levels. This would make leveling (and ultimately bonding) a Destiny a faster process compared to the current pace.

The XP curve better be implemented with the level cap being raised. If both Heroic and Epic XP levels aren't changed when we get the additional Epic levels, it's very poor planning... Kind of like adding Epic Destinies in the game before the new enhancement system and full prestige classes... or adding a mechanism that erases all XP gained for the past year.


• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

So the patches that restored XP to EDs after TRing were no WAI?

[SirValentine]

• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.


You give up YOUR CURRENT LIFE to get the feat. Not the other ten you ground out, too. Or if you give them up, you get those 10 feats, too. Taking the XP from EDs that you don't grant a destiny feat for is wrong.

You might want to completely scrap the whole "bonding" thing. What is it supposed to add?

[SerPounce]

I haven't read the thread, but I'm going to guess it's full of requests not to erase all ED XP on a TR in exchange for some low level ranks. And yeah... that's crazy.

Keep the current TR system in place where you don't loose Destiny XP. Then ad an epic system that erases one destiny's XP at a time (not all of them) then you have to regrind it at an increased cost like current heroic TR.

ALSO - (!!!)
**** do something about repeat penalties when you do this ****

Maybe just make it reset each weak like ransack.

[oradafu]

You give up YOUR CURRENT LIFE to get the feat. Not the other ten you ground out, too. Or if you give them up, you get those 10 feats, too. Taking the XP from EDs that you don't grant a destiny feat for is wrong.

You might want to completely scrap the whole "bonding" thing. What is it supposed to add?

What is it suppose to add? Additional grind and extending the game artificially with no additional content. Much like the current TR system, but much, much worse.

[cyreme]

Trying to be logical despite thousand screaming monkeys in my head. I doubt that all epic destinies progress will be taken away, although dev's posts fail to clearly state this one way or the other, which I think causes ppl like me to freak out. Here is why I doubt it.
-unlocked ED spheres - what do you do with them if epic destiny progress is taken away? You can't just re-lock them. Ppl bought keys of destiny and unlocked them. From the point of view of programming mechanics it makes no sense - too involving. I.e. it is unlikely that destiny spheres will be relocked. Consequently, it is unlikely that ED lvls needed to unlock them will be removed also. Think about it. This calms me down a little. Hope it helps someone else.

[merentha]

My reaction to ED xp getting wiped on TRing:





The picture made me laugh (it really was worth at least 1000 words). I have to disagree with the reaction as my understanding was that a Heroic TR (levels 1-20) wouldn't wipe ED progress still, but choosing the Epic TR would.

Those of us who have maxed or near maxed the spheres are the only ones who will 'feel the pain' in comparison to those who have only done one or two Destinies to cap or even a path progression for particular twists.

I'll feel the pain on my TR since I took time this life to get all his destinies to level 5 for the twist points and that 38 point build and extra past life feats does appeal to me, just maybe not that much after all. I love this game, but it's almost sounding like a job with what this initial write up is saying, but also as so much else Turbine initially releases to us...it very likely could be completely different to what we are assuming.

Some fun examples: (actually I snipped this and am deciding if I'll edit another post and drop it as a pet peeve under the Monday with Mal thread)

[Sonos]

I would like to add that if fate points were locked, then the system would work a hell of a lot better. Anything short of that is just going to really **** off a whole lot of otherwise loyal fans of the game.

Edit: Unless we hear something soon, this may be my last post. 1,337 posts would be a nice number to leave on.

[SirValentine]

Without the benefit of a time machine, that's not going to happen.


Exactly my point.



I don't agree with your comparison, a closer one would be:
You Heroic TR and you lose all of your Heroic XP, you gain a Heroic Past Life Feat.


Except when you Heroic TR, you don't lose ALL the XP you've ever earned, you only lose the XP associated with your current "active" life.



the cost is "reasonable".


No, it's not reasonable at all to punish people who put more effort in by taking away 11 times as much XP as someone who only did 1 destiny.

[SilkofDrasnia]

Yeah, you can't be genuinely naive enough to actually believe that though, do you? A company has a desire to lose it's customers, it's revenue and be forced to dismiss all it's employees? You know many companies who work that way?

I see it that they are trying to add something to game to help it attract more players, by making some of the systems more transparent in the case of the enhancements, and adding additional playability to the end-game in the Epic TRing.

Now they haven't got either of these systems perfect from what I've seen and I've spent a lot of time looking, but neither are they a million miles from the mark. People actually asking them to abandon however many man-years of design and development in the new enhancements are kidding themselves. It's a lot easier to pull it back on-track with some straight forward changes that make it interesting and fun again, while actually adding more build variety. The Epic TRing just needs to leave Heroic TRing alone and make it clear Epic TRing is optional. Being able to Epic TR into a level 15 (+advantage ranks) of an Iconic is a nice idea that I don't anyone else had thought of, so lets give them credit for that. Gaining Epic Destiny Past Life Feats, Iconic Hero Past Life Feats and Epic Completionist Feats are also good options - so long as they are all auto-granted Feats and they revise the current Completionist Feat to be auto-granted too.

What they can't afford to do in a competitive marketplace is say that nothing will ever change and only cater for the same closed player base, which will inevitably shrink through natural causes over time.

No one is saying nothing should ever change. They are killing some of the main appeal to the game though by practically enforcing cookie cutter builds and removing the "freedom" we had with the new enhancement pass and now add this. Sure they may be trying to invigorate the game by trying to attract new players but wowifying the game will not help it. There are other games that do this better and are better looking.

By all mean some of these changes are interesting but how they have implemented it is god awful. You will not convince me they had no idea they wanted to go this route with epic destinies and they let people max out destinies with no warnings what so ever.

Really for people that have one or 2 maxed destines and not many levels in the other destinies this is meh but okay, for the rest of us we are being screwed over hard and fast.

Basically there's no point in doing any epics right now for destiny levels unless you haven't run any yet. It is basically them wiping all our maxed out destines with no reward. Please do not tell me the extra ranks on TRing are anything of value. One to 11 on a 3rd life is not that hard or particularly long to do.

For the new person it's woohoo I will max out one destiny while leveling to 28, bond that destiny via epic destiny TR and do another life rinse and repeat no harm no foul.

For the player that likes to TR often and juggles their time between TRing and running epics and has been doing this it is a huge huge fail we lose all our maxed destinies for NOTHING as we couldn't bond them in the first place.

It is like changing how completionist works, after the fact that a large amount of the players base has achieved it, and making them lose it by removing previous lives they have done and saying, to bad so sorry regrind them.

[GermanicusMaximus]

Holt sh*it.

You really are trying to get people to quit DDO.

Were you thinking that all of us not playing atm because we are waiting to see enhancement pass before putting more time into an alt, would come back and hurry up and TR?

This is just crazy. My cleric is borked, but has max Destiny xp ( mind you, not ground out in Rusted Blades..but actually leading raids. running quests and pugging ) And I am going to lose all this if I wait to TR til I see the new Alpha and system?

I think I'll just keep taking a break.

OK, I was going to step in here and note that, compared to how Turbine has systematically and intentionally borked my cleric from Day 1 of MotU all the way through the enhancement pass alpha, this design actually looks pretty good. Now, you have sorta stolen my thunder.

Although, the fact is, compared to how Turbine has systematically and intentionally borked my cleric from Day 1 of MotU all the way through the enhancement pass alpha, this design actually does look pretty good.

Having said that, my cleric has all the Epic Destinies capped out, and if Turbine believes that I would ever ditch that enormous amount of XP to TR under this system, they are absolutely...mistaken.

I do want to thank Turbine, however. I used to play this game a fair amount, and spend money in the process. I still log on for about an hour a day to goof off, but the vast majority of the Turbine related entertainment I now receive is free, obtained simply by reading the forums to see what inane move you guys are planning to make next.


Giving up ED XP is not acceptable for ANYTHING.

Keep up with this foolishness and many will never TR again.

You do not understand your players and you game if you think otherwise.

This is an Xbox level mistake.

Yes, you are angry, but you need to come to grips with WHY you are angry.

You come to troll, but the simple fact is that Turbine simply has you out gunned. They clearly are capable of trolling their customers at a far higher level than you could ever hope to troll them. Game over (pun intended). Tip your hat, and admit when you are beaten.

[soloist12]

you need to be able to apply exp to a destiny you are no currentlyt utilizing. period.

I cannot stress how key this is, and should have been implemented from the beginning.

The system* currently chases you away from cutting edge and fun content, and into low level eye-bleeding farming because you can't run a typical ee quest on a sorc, geared as a sorc, but in the LD destiny.

Like really?



*You guys assumed the destiny system in the same way you did TRing, except it's not the same. For a barb life on a primarily caster character, it's not a huge deal. You are what you are from the gate: a barb. You play the entire life out as one.

But for destiny's, you're a split character. Some kind of melee but with fireballs, yet you don't have the DCs or the to hit for up to date content, and you're left scratching your head as you trudge back to lvl 21 quests on your decked out caster and realize that you can't farm for your top gear AND exp at the same time, ever.

[Charononus]

OK, I was going to step in here and note that, compared to how Turbine has systematically and intentionally borked my cleric from Day 1 of MotU all the way through the enhancement pass alpha, this design actually looks pretty good. Now, you have sorta stolen my thunder.

Although, the fact is, compared to how Turbine has systematically and intentionally borked my cleric from Day 1 of MotU all the way through the enhancement pass alpha, this design actually does look pretty good.

Having said that, my cleric has all the Epic Destinies capped out, and if Turbine believes that I would ever ditch that enormous amount of XP to TR under this system, they are absolutely...mistaken.

I do want to thank Turbine, however. I used to play this game a fair amount, and spend money in the process. I still log on for about an hour a day to goof off, but the vast majority of the Turbine related entertainment I now receive is free, obtained simply by reading the forums to see what inane move you guys are planning to make next.



Yes, you are angry, but you need to come to grips with WHY you are angry.

You come to troll, but the simple fact is that Turbine simply has you out gunned. They clearly are capable of trolling their customers at a far higher level than you could ever hope to troll them. Game over (pun intended). Tip your hat, and admit when you are beaten.

http://cdn.humorswitch.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/image1.jpg
The bunny wins

[Teh_Troll]

Yes, you are angry, but you need to come to grips with WHY you are angry.

You come to troll, but the simple fact is that Turbine simply has you out gunned. They clearly are capable of trolling their customers at a far higher level than you could ever hope to troll them. Game over (pun intended). Tip your hat, and admit when you are beaten.

I'm not angry at all, I'm just blunt. I actually find this quite amusing as just when I though Turbine couldn't have any worse ideas they pull this out of a random orifice.

And I've not yet begun to Troll.

[Thar]

I am excited to start sharing our plans for the future of the Reincarnation system! Later this year (targeting Update 20) we look forward to introducing two new TR destinations, Epic Destiny True Reincarnation and Iconic True Reincarnation. We’ve got some minor improvements involving Lesser and Greater Reincarnation in store, as well.


We’ve seen a number of questions and discussions about TR, Iconics, and the TR / end-game gap. For the expansion pack, we are focused on ensuring that the new races are fun and playable, the content is fun and beautiful, and that the enhancement system changes launch as expected! With that, we plan to build out the TR system later in the year. The team is also taking the time to get your early feedback as the designers and engineers lock down feature plans. - How does this fit (or change) your playstyle? Read on for details, then let us know!

A few goals for Epic Destiny TR:



Extend Reincarnation system to allow for 38-point builds
Include Epic Destinies in the TR cycle (with Epic Destiny Past Life Feats)
Reward you for additional investment in Epic Destinies (with starting ranks after TR)
Adjust the XP curve in Epic levels for multi-life TR to avoid the dramatic escalating grind
Include Iconics in the TR cycle (with Iconic Past Life Feats)
Allow you to TR into and out of Iconics (if you own Iconics)


How does this system look in practice?

Heroic True Reincarnation



Heroic TR remains primarily unchanged at level 20 or above
Grants a Class Past Life Feat that can stack up to 3x
Adds 2 build points up to a 36 point build
Benefits from the Epic Advantage if you earn Epic Destinies before TR (below)


Epic Destiny True Reincarnation



Can be taken at Level Cap (Level 28 with Shadowfell Conspiracy)
Grants an Epic Destiny Past Life Feat

Feat based on active, maximized Epic Destiny


Karmic Bond -The active ED’s experience is now bonded through each ED True Reincarnation going forward
Grants a Class Past Life Feat (same as Heroic TR)
You must have a maximized, non-bonded ED to complete this TR
Adds 2 build points up to a 38 point build


Epic Advantage


With any type of True Reincarnation, all Epic Destiny Levels earned will give you an advantage when you rebuild your character, by converting Destiny Levels into Heroic Ranks. Every level of Epic Destiny you have earned will count toward ranks earned for your next life. (Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR.)

Iconic True Reincarnation

That’s right; Iconics will have their own form of True Reincarnation, earning their own unique set of past-life feats. You will also be able to TR from any character into an Iconic, which begins at level 15, like normal. Epic Advantage also works on both ends, as well, transferring ED XP earned in your Iconic life, and, if you TR into an Iconic, adding XP on top of your level 15 starting XP.Can be taken at Level Cap (Level 28 with Shadowfell Conspiracy)



Grants an Iconic Past Life Feat that can stack up to 3x
Adds 2 build points up a 36 point build
Earns ranks from Epic Advantage


What else?

Here are some changes we’re currently exploring:



Reincarnation cooldown timer reduced to 3 days.
Reincarnation XP curves smoothed to ease penalties for multiple lives.
Lesser Reincarnation will allow a Heroic character to reincarnate as a Champion. Greater Reincarnation will no longer be sold, in favor of an improved Lesser Reincarnation.
Iconic characters will be able to Lesser Reincarnate


We are eager to begin production on this system and appreciate the many players that are eager to see us fulfill the end game potential that the TR system presents. With these changes we are also keeping a long-term view for TR, such as how to expand the Epic Destiny system and continue to support level cap growth in the future.


Our sincere intentions are to provide these features to you, and the DDO community at large. We invite you response to these details and thank you for your support and fortitude while we roll these changes out in support of this year’s expansion pack. The team is thrilled that DDO continues to grow, innovate, and provide a great D&D experience.

So part of the aspect of TR is to get a group of friends and tr together, how will extra xp/ranks from ed's help make this start anywhere possible?

bad idea to include ED... no one wants to redo that. you would have to make the reward crazy powerful and hence gamebraking. what feat would tempt someone who has all destinies completed to do this?

tr into an ikconic and then get stuck unable to tr afterwards? more info is needed.

[SirValentine]

Epic Destiny True Reincarnation



Can be taken at Level Cap (Level 28 with Shadowfell Conspiracy)
Grants an Epic Destiny Past Life Feat

Feat based on active, maximized Epic Destiny


Karmic Bond -The active ED’s experience is now bonded through each ED True Reincarnation going forward
Grants a Class Past Life Feat (same as Heroic TR)
You must have a maximized, non-bonded ED to complete this TR
Adds 2 build points up to a 38 point build



Let me provide a more specific alternate suggestion:

Epic Destiny True Reincarnation, version 2.0



Can be taken at Level Cap (Level 28 with Shadowfell Conspiracy)
You must have a maximized ED to complete this TR
Grants an Epic Destiny Past Life Feat


Feat based on active, maximized Epic Destiny


Destiny XP is reset to zero for the active, maximized Epic Destiny

Other Destinies are not affected


Grants a Class Past Life Feat (same as Heroic TR)
Adds 2 build points up to a 38 point build

[Coyopa]

I have four characters who are on their second life: a 24 monk, 25 ranger, 25 rogue, and 15 cleric. All the rest of my characters are first life: 23 bard, 20 barbarian, 21 wizard (22 banked), 25 druid, 20 artificer, 14 fighter, 20 human (12 fighter/7 monk/1 rogue), and 14 half-orc (7 rogue/6 monk/1 fighter).

The monk, rogue, and druid have either 4/1/1 (monk) or 4/2/1 twists. I was working on epic destiny exp on my ranger, but frankly without being in Shiradi the ranger is just not very competitive at 25 and not very much fun. The cleric got TR'd a bit earlier than I would have liked, but I made a promise to a friend to TR her with one of his characters and I kept that promise.

So, if you are going to take away all my epic destiny experience just because I heroic TR, then I am not going to heroic TR and will eventually quit. I like TR'ing once in a while. The "epic advantage" is not much of an advantage because I *like* the low levels. I like running Korthos again once in a while. I also like being at high level and working on epic gear while there. I have been trying to get a second epic midnight greetings for my rogue and have the 43 epic dungeon tokens to prove it.

I've been VIP for the three years I have been playing. I am in the process of saving for a new computer for myself and then I intend to get one for my wife - so she can start playing the game, too. Screw up the TR'ing like you're discussing and that will not happen. I want the ability to TR and start at level one with her. I do not want the "gift" of starting at level 11 just because I was playing before she was.

No way in hell am I going to do any destiny farming on any of my characters if you release this system in the state you are discussing. It was an exceptionally mind-numbingly boring grind the first 3 times. My friend opted for the approach of "do a TR, get an ED or 2 done, then TR again". Even for him, you'll kill TR'ing because that was kind of the icing on the cake for him: eventually get all the destinies done without having spent tons of time at cap like I did.

To sum up: Bad idea. Implement and *I*. WILL. WALK. AWAY.

[mikarddo]

Thanks for all the responses so far everyone. The team will try to address the details as best we can this early in development. Here are a few more clarifications as we’re reviewing your comments:

• Our intention is that players will be able to earn or buy Epic Destiny TR hearts of wood.
• We’ll continue to add more epic level content so that players have a variety of paths for leveling.
• To engage with Epic Destiny TR, you don’t have to have all destinies maxed out. Character level 28 + one maxed destiny is when you can bond your first destiny.
• We are revisiting XP curves in not only the Heroic levels but also the Epic levels. This would make leveling (and ultimately bonding) a Destiny a faster process compared to the current pace.
• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

We are also making balance changes to compensate for the fact that the system goes into higher levels, and we expect that parts of the design summary will seem less harsh once these details are better understood. We’ll be reading discussion in this thread and will continue to post here with more details as we go (such as details regarding Fate Points, Completionist, and the exact effects of turning in your Epic Destiny xp on your new life).

1. Epic TR should reset to level 20 - not to some low level. Leave Heroic TR redoing level 1-20 and let Epic TR redo 20+
2. Make all unlocked EDs still unlocked after an Epic TR just with no xp in them.
3. Make all twist points remain after an Epic TR (only gaining additional twist points when you go beyond what you had before)

This means that you can redo the ED you actually want to use on any given ETR and actually remain max level for a while without having to unrealistically regrind a load of twists and/or regrind to traverse the spheres.

[Abilbo]

Basically there's no point in doing any epics right now for destiny levels unless you haven't run any yet. It is basically them wiping all our maxed out destines with no reward. Please do not tell me the extra ranks on TRing are anything of value. One to 11 on a 3rd life is not that hard or particularly long to do.

/agree

By posting this, you basically just told EVERY player in the game, that is working on ED's that they are now wasting their time, and they are going to stop playing. Anytime you implement a change that makes players stop playing, you run the risk they are going to wander off and find something else to do.

[Missing_Minds]

• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.
And yet the current system in place is one that does not remove ED XP. THAT IS THE ISSUE! You will sell less from the store, NOT more. Sales of wood will drop, and that does not do well for the bottom line. And yes, i did read taht "it will be applied to the next life" AFTER you've done the XP curve pass as you are applying RANKS not XP.

Going from 20 to 25 right now only maxes out 1 ED and a good chunk of a second.

YOU ARE GOING TO SCREW OVER EVERYONE THAT ALREADY MAXED IT OUT. Add in a few other choice comments for this being bent over process. The power "gained" from one life to the next is NOTHING compared to how much is going to be lost in this mess.

The only people that this will help are people brand new to epics. Everyone who has been playing epics right now is going to be hurt by this. Who the frack thought of this torturous design? JWB? If so tell him to f'off and take his degree with him. We do NOT need physiological torturer in this game just so he can get his jolly rocks off.

https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/7562537216/h69671496/
http://cheezburger.com/7562537216

[Qhualor]

im near the end of my ED grind. I need 3 more fate points for my last twist. there is no way in Hell I am leveling through other destinies on my barb again. I actually feel like I am working and completely zombified when I grind Rusted Blades. I know I don't have to do it that way, but we all know its the fastest and easiest way to ED grind and I want it over with last week. I dread having to do the same thing on my other characters. I was willing to accept that I would have to do earn it to be able to twist something from another destiny, but you don't see a difference in dps on a barb until you level through Exalted Angel. ED levels should not be lost and not have to re-level again.

[Deadlock]

Please do not tell me the extra ranks on TRing are anything of value. One to 11 on a 3rd life is not that hard or particularly long to do.

Epic TRing and gaining ranks on a standard class is definitely meh. It typically takes us around 7 or 8 hours to get to level 12 which is where the extra 55 ranks would get you. Adding the 55 ranks to an Iconic Hero who would normally start at rank 71 is much more interesting to me.

In the nicest way possible, I don't believe that the detail of this system was thrashed out by Turbine when ED's were introduced with U14. There might have been some internal speculations on what might happen, but definitely nothing that could be built into the design ahead of time. I just don't give them credit for that kind of foresight, but in fairness, I wouldn't give anyone credit for being able to predict the future that accurately.

The advance notice that we have is that this might come with U20, so we do have some time to provide feedback and people can decide for themselves what they want to do between now and then.

For the people like myself who have put the 21,780,000 XP into capping all destinies it's inevitable that we'll be affected most by taking away the ED XP. There's no way to avoid that without leaving everything as it is right now. Someone suggested in another post that if you have all destines capped then you should be allowed to "bond" 3 destinies when this goes live, presumably gaining 3 Epic Destiny Past Life Feats in the process. Assuming that the XP to cap at 28 is reduced from 6,600,000 XP to something like 4million, this would be effectively saving you 12 million XP? That would seem more than generous to me, and I wouldn't say no to it. It would need to be a go-live transition option only though, otherwise all people would do is get to 28 and run RB a zillion times to cap out all ED's and bond an additional 3 each time.

Overall, I like the proposal, and the option to gain 12 Iconic Past Life Feats, 11 Epic Destiny Past Life Feats and Epic Completionist appeals to me. I just think that they are breaking the Heroic TR option in the process for no good reason and hope they will see sense and fix that part of it.

[oradafu]

I really can't see why players can't keep their ED XP when they TR.

When Epic TRing, players can pick one of the maxed EDs to gain benefits from each life.

Players would still have to TR 11 more times to gain the Epic completionist, until more Epic Destinies are added.

Even if max EDs allows players to skip the first half of heroics and Heroic Iconic TRs can skip additional 5 levels, that still levels plenty of grinding for MOST players.

For non-max ED players, they can chip away at the re-grinding of lower levels by leveling up in EDs that they haven't done yet or ignore it completely, just like right now.

[arkonas]

Alright i would be willing to restart at 20 since its based mainly on epic destiny stuff as long as the epic quests reset as well. im more willing to take a hit there. iconics im ok with as well. heroic tring should not wipe ed xp imo. that is a real kick in the nuts for them.

fate points should retain. if the abilities are worth it the people might be more willing to make that sacrifice. I think if this system was implemented when destinies came out many would not care. in fact they would love it really. Since a lot of us paid cash for the system we really dont want to see all that time wasted. i would even be in favor of the grandfather option for all maxed ed's to count. sure it will make some toons powerful but it will also make them happy they didnt lose it. i think the system if fine overall but not for the people to lose all 11 maxed destinies.

So if we can do something like above i think people might be more reasonable with the idea.

[eonfreon]

I see others have already pointed out what I wanted to point out, but I'll do so anyway and hope that it penetrates some Devs' skulls.

By having a system that erases all of our earned Epic Destiny XP, Turbine is essentially telling us that there is no point in playing their current endgame beyond a certain, very limited point.

I'm not into TRing so I've just been playing enough to advance EDs. I've just found out that, in essence, I've just been wasting my time. I should have just TRed repeatedly rather than tried playing the game in near-useless EDs.

But since I don't feel like TRing I guess there is no point at all to playing right now. Anything I advance will just be erased down the line if I feel like TRing.

So really, there's just no point for me to be playing in Epics for now. Great. Thanks a lot Turbine.

[ForumAccess]

• To engage with Epic Destiny TR, you don’t have to have all destinies maxed out. Character level 28 + one maxed destiny is when you can bond your first destiny.
• We are revisiting XP curves in not only the Heroic levels but also the Epic levels. This would make leveling (and ultimately bonding) a Destiny a faster process compared to the current pace.
• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.


The problem with this is that many people have already gone and capped all of their Epic Destinies. Often through mind numbing grinding and grinding. And they did so with the guarantee that they would only have to do so once for that character.

From the perspective of a new character, the system sounds great. But that is not where people are coming from. They are coming from the point where they have dumped the equivalent of many TRs worth of time into finishing their Epic Destinies, because they were told that this was a 'once per character' mountain to climb. And now they are being told that if they want to progress that character any further, they are just plain screwed.

I am really hoping that this goes through a great deal of rethinking before it goes live. Either changing the plan entirely, or make it so that when the new system rolls out any destinies that are already maxed are all bonded (but without the rest of the Epic TR benefits) with the ability to do an eTR and gain the benefit of whichever maxed ED you have active. Because as it is right now, this is exactly the kind of disincentive needed to make sure I never reinstall DDO again.

EDIT:

I think if this system was implemented when destinies came out many would not care. in fact they would love it really.
This is absolutely true. The system described here does not seem like a bad one. And had it been introduced with MotU so that everyone would have understood what their choices meant I think it would have been well received. But because it was tacked on a year later, and it contradicts what players were told about the Epic Destiny system, it ends up very heavily punishing anyone who has been playing for the last year.

[QuickSlick79]

Posted this message in the wrong thread. Reposting it here because I want them to see how I feel about this LAUGHABLE joke of a "plan."

***

All I can say is I simply LOATH the idea of getting rid of our Epic Destiny experience.

This whole "bonding" destiny is just a load. It seems like a very very VERY cheap way of getting rid of all our hard work and a ROTTEN way of trying to extend the excuse of an "end game."

It's actually a little pitiful, like, I'm seeing red. How much you wanna bet they also take away your "twists of fate" points? Oh but don't worry, the tome points will stay. You'll just have to farm like a madman to get all of your twists back.

How messed up is it to devote time to "twists" as the new Epic Tr, only to release a system that basically wipes all of that work we put in clean? Sure, we'll get a few rewards back, but at the cost of deleting progress. And not in a fun way like normal TR.

I've gotten my Epic Destinies and Fate Points THROUGH multiple TR grinding. I did not just park at 20 and max out every ED. To have all that work cleaned away just so I can partake in the new power creep is just DISGUSTING. Another example of how you release half worked idea's and simply DROP them in favor of some other money grabbing grind mechanic.

How about, instead, you introduce EPIC RANK points JUST like Heroic Ranks. These EPIC RANKS don't do ANYTHING but "build your heroic ranks" like they propose all my HARD EARNED EPIC DESTINY ranks should do.

Just disgusting behavior Turbine after your mess of a pre order. "Oh, our interns can't type so we false advertised for a few hours about bound to account items that are bound to character. Thanks for the hundred dollar pre orders anyway!"

Hope Dev's are reading because I want them to see how seething this could make the community.

[nni]

Let me provide a more specific alternate suggestion:

Epic Destiny True Reincarnation, version 2.0



Can be taken at Level Cap (Level 28 with Shadowfell Conspiracy)
You must have a maximized ED to complete this TR
Grants an Epic Destiny Past Life Feat


Feat based on active, maximized Epic Destiny


Destiny XP is reset to zero for the active, maximized Epic Destiny

Other Destinies are not affected


Grants a Class Past Life Feat (same as Heroic TR)
Adds 2 build points up to a 38 point build


This makes sense. It does not punish people for having capped out other destinies.

[Darkrok]

Simply put, any system that penalizes people that ground out all of their epic destinies for doing so is a complete failure. When they first added TR'ing, everyone had the exact same amount of level 20 experience. No one had spent 10's or 100's of hours grinding quests just for xp at the cap. They may have raided, gotten gear, etc, but no one had gone through that insane grind. So everyone was on equal footing going in to the new system.

Now a new system is being proposed where NOT working toward improving your character is rewarded by proxy. If you have a toon that's capped 1 epic destiny and hit level 28 they lose NOTHING but starting a TR to TR. Take another character that's capped 11 epic destinies and hit level 28 and they lose nearly 20 million xp. That's punitive and feels like Turbine is out to punish their more active players.

Personally I will not spend a dime on this because I'd rather have a level 28, maxed ED toon with whatever past lives I have at the time than to EVER go through the epic destiny grind again. I've worked my butt off over the last several weeks to cap 1 toon's ED's and was planning on doing the same on my sorc. You'd have to cut the ED grind to about 10% of what it is right now for me to EVER consider doing it again. So basically you've taken someone that might have TR'd several times after the next update to try out different builds and locked me out of doing so. I'll make sure I'm on the build I want and then I'll stay there. Most likely I'll be capped...I'll get bored...and I'll leave. The ED system that you designed is not fun. Rather than accepting that and looking for a way to make it more enjoyable you've doubled down on it and created even more grind.

I'll pass.

[kain741]

I have not yet started leveling my epic destinies, I love the proposed changes.
Levels the playing field between people like me, and those who ground out rusted blades before the xp nerf.

Is this going to fix the shears of fate exploit? The people who took advantage of that deserve to have their ED xp reset.


Sure, it levels the playing field. And if they took all my past lives away that would level the playing field with someone who just rolled up their first toon on Korthos an hour ago. I was under the assumption the point of putting the work in was to make our toons better and stronger and not to be recalibrated so those that haven't put the time in would feel better. Should the point be to make everyone equal? If so, why would anyone work to get ahead?

[Darkrok]

This makes sense. It does not punish people for having capped out other destinies.

Yes, absolutely. When we level to 20 we lost all of the xp of leveling to 20. We lost none of the ED xp. That's because that's not what we were TR'ing. It should stay like that!

If you want to add an epic advantage add it for people that have epic TR'd and add it for the number of bonded destinies you have. NEVER wipe epic xp on a heroic TR. It simply kills the heroic TR game completely.

And on epic TR's, they should absolutely only wipe the destiny you're TR'ing.

The only way I could see it working if you plan on wiping ED is to do what many have suggested and bond all ED xp gained before this system is implemented. Otherwise you will just lose your longer-term players. I know people that have ground out max ED's on 20+ toons. I can guarantee you they're gone with this system. I know I would be. No system should be punitive to previous success.

[QuickSlick79]

Yknow what else all these proposed changes do?

Suffocate my choices. I feel paralyzed now to do anything on ANY of my characters. Even if I want to TR on a heroic level I'll lose all my epic destiny experience, and WHO KNOWS if I'll wanna stay in my given class forever and grind Epic Destinies because "soon" Turbine is forcing an entire revamp of CLASS ABILITIES on us.

So hey, even if we don't like the changes to our classes guess what? We no longer have the choice to TR into a class we may enjoy more. Why? Because we would lose all the millions of experience from our Epic Destinies we may want to cling too.

This is developmental entrapment. I'm being punished and limited. I suddenly have zero interest in playing any of my characters, not only that, I'm not just void of interest but void of COMFORT and SECURITY for any plans really.

Way to deal another mortal blow to your game Turbine.

Unless...perhaps? Maybe? Will you wise up? Listen to players?

[Gratch]

After most of a day to think about it... here are my two (+1) thoughts that are more fixes to this system rather then outright dismissal.


Allow heroic/iconic TR's to decide if they want to push ED levels into heroic XP at the start of a next life. Put some altar with multiple warnings at the new TR-zone-in area/iconic start-up area. This would allow them with multiple warnings and a tome-length progress-bar to turn ED-levels into heroic ranks for this life. There may be a point where someone does want to do this... maybe. In theory it's also easier on your tech since it would keep heroic TR working the same way it currently does.
There's currently a number of players who have invested a ton of time into maxing all ED's and don't want to see that JUST turn into heroic XP if they Epic TR. Provide some BIG one time CARROT for those that Epic TR a destiny-maxed character:

Something BIG that can only be acquired once: 40 pt build. or +2 points to use in your active destiny or a second selectable heroic or epic past life feat. (Would also bond the 2nd epic ED).
Restart the character with enough XP to level to 20. You could actually do this part anytime someone Epic TR's a destiny-full character... which would happen more and more as they get all their destinies bonded.

Also... 1 ED to 1 Heroic Rank seems small. Add in a mini-game challenge allowing the player to win a higher return on ED investment. We'll call it Shinies vs. Kobolds.


It would also help to see the devs thoughts on auto-granted ED feats/bonuses. A little carrot to go with the how it happens.

[moops]

I have not yet started leveling my epic destinies, I love the proposed changes.
Levels the playing field between people like me, and those who ground out rusted blades before the xp nerf.

Is this going to fix the shears of fate exploit? The people who took advantage of that deserve to have their ED xp reset.


I am not sure why you feel the paying field needs to be leveled? We are not in competition with each other such as pvp.

It's good to have someone like me who can lead raids and quests, and take new people and try to teach them the strategies of these things, get them some gear. I will do this because I know in the end that I have a build that can solo or duo it if need be to get it done...tho of course I would never do this for a group that was not TRYING.

[FestusHood]

My current playstyle is to play a character up to 20, and then advance in a destiny or 2, and then heroic tr. Then when i get to level 20 again, usually in a different class, i work on a couple of more destinies before doing another tr.

I understand how doing an epic tr would wipe your destiny xp. I'm not sure why people would be surprised at this. Doing a heroic tr wipes all your heroic xp.

Keep them separate please.

If you heroic tr, reset the heroic xp, but leave the destiny xp alone.

If you epic tr, leave the heroic xp alone. restart at level 20. Then do the epic thing again. This would be for those people who only like playing at endgame.

The idea that every tr will require you to do the ENTIRE xp grind again, both heroic and epic is mind numbing just to think about.

[Stoner81]

As an extra added incentive I think we should get an extra 2 points to spend in the destiny trees for a total of 26 points per tree which leads on to the following...

Having destinies available from level 10/creation sounds like a good idea but I think it should be split up. Each destiny is split in to 5 levels each with ranks which allocates 4 points to spend in the destiny tree, this could be set up so that points become available at certain levels such as:

Level 0/creation - 4 points.
Level 4 - 4 points.
Level 8 - 4 points.
Level 12 - 4 points.
Level 16 - 4 points.
Level 20 - 4 points.

This could be given as a general past life feat which is only given once and could say "Your remember more about your epic life, as you gain levels you regain abilities from your destiny at the rate of 4 points per 4 levels past creation", also you would be able to switch between destinies at will (public areas only I mean) which have been fully unlocked and bonded regardless of where they are in the tree. Also this would unlock your twists as you approach level so by the time you reach 20 you would have all the fate points from whatever destinies you have unlocked, yes I know many people have fully unlocked their destinies and there should be something to help them obviously I just see little point in complaining about the system when Turbine Devs have asked for ideas as well as feedback to make things better hence the above :)

I like the looks of the past life feats somebody posted though I would change LD from +5 damage to +1[W] on all melee attacks (stacks with other sources such as Deadly Weapons), these past life feats need to be seriously (and I mean SERIOUSLY) good otherwise people won't bother with them. They must be attractive enough for them to lose all that ED XP as it currently stands it simply has to happen.

Stoner81.

[Cetus]

Has anyone else ordered 2 months of popcorn in advance for when the bugs start coming in?

The entire reincarnation system will be a mess after they try to pull this one off...

[Ziindarax]

Since we're talking about changing the way TRing works, I'd like to start with one of my MAJOR pet peeves with the TR system:

TR cache. Let's face it, over each character's life, we accumulate items and what not that are useful to us (and for many of us, we also take the time to accumulate loot that will benefit our next planned life [or lives]). Problem is, we simply don't have enough inventory/bank space to store all the junk we accumulate (and while it is true that you can probably destroy a good amount of it, eventually, it's going to get to a point where all "junk" you have in your TR cache is valuable, hard-to-obtain loot that you don't want to throw away).

My suggestion: Either make it so you don't have to clear out your TR cache before you TR, OR offer us Supreme Enchanted Bags of Holding (SEBoH) that work like Colossal bags that are capable of holding THOUSANDS of unique items (complete with a search function as with the other bags, and also adding an advanced search/organization feature to quickly and more easily find desired items). Should you go along with the route of adding supreme enchanted bags, there are two critical functions that need to be added to make this work.

a) GM-Flagging: Basically, whenever you put in (or remove) an item from this bag, it leaves a flag or tracer for a GM/Turbine Account staff. The purpose of this is to prevent situations wherein if the player, for whatever reason, winds up LOSING their Supreme Enchanted Bags of Holding (usually by glitch) via TR'ing or whatever (and by extension, EVERYTHING they put into the now lost bag), it would enable a GM/Turbine Account staff to quickly find and retreive those items. This feature would also work in such a way that items stored within other bags that THEN wind up into the SEBoH would also be recorded so no one has to worry about losing collectables (such as Flawless Red Dragon scales), or Ingredients (such as that once-in-a-millenium-super-ultra-hyper-rare Shard of the Ring of Spell Storing) in the event that the bag gets lost.

b) Multi-selector: Another annoying feature of TR caches is that you must Meticulously, and painstakingly empty your cache ONE. ITEM. AT. A. TIME. These SEBoH's should offer the ability to select multiple items (or even the ability to take ALL of them out at once, if one should so desire), and with a single click, receive those items.

As for the rest, here are my 10 cents (with questions mixed in):

Problem #1: Your "Epic Advantage" is only really "Epic" if you TR into an Iconic (seeing as you start at level 15, and could potentially be boosted to level 20). In practice, this does more harm than good (even for Iconics) because it currently takes a considerable amount of time to level or farm a destiny without experience potions, and with your current proposition, it seems flat out wasteful to TR.

Proposed Solution #1: Epic Advantage should MEAN Epic Advantage; when you Epic TR, you should receive: either SP or HP (depending on the destiny you "bonded" with), a MEANINGFUL boost granted by the epic destiny (for example, those who TR'ed bonding with Legendary Dreadnaught should receive a stacking +20 boost to the DC's of their tactical abilities [+20 may seem like a lot, but really it's not when you consider the inflated saves of enemy mobs, especially Epic Elites]), AND... a flag.

Yes, a flag - When you ED TR a certain number of times, you get additional benefits. Below is a rough outline of what I have in mind:

2-3 destinies bonded: a stacking +20 boost to your universal spell power, +2% to hit and damage with all weapons, and +1 to all saves.

4 destinies bonded - Your knowledge of the Universe has expanded greatly, and you have become proficient with manipulating your fate - As such, you are now able to have two epic destinies active at any given time (though only one of them can be bonded).

5-6 destinies bonded: the boosts provided in #1 increases to +50 stacking boost to your universal spell power, +5% to hit and damage with all weapons, and +3 to all saves. The DC's of ALL your spells (if applicable) are increased by +5.

7 Destinies bonded: You receive 4 additional action points for each of the destinies you've bonded with so far. This would allow a player to unlock more abilities (or ability scores), thus granting greater benefits.

8 Destinies bonded: You permanently receive 2 additional epic feat slots (one at level 22, and another at level 25).


9 Destinies bonded: *like the 7 destinies bonded tier, but for nine destinies.*


10 Destinies bonded: Sage of the Ages: Your knowledge of the Universe continues to grow - you can now have 3 destinies active at any given time.

11 Destinies bonded/Completionist: A Deity Amongst Mortals - Your understanding of the Universe has expanded to such a degree that you've nearly become a god. Passive feat - You gain +8 stacking boost to all ability scores and skills. Your Spellpower (if applicable) is increased by 200, your spell DC's are increased by 20, and your to-hit and weapon damage is increased by 20. Furthermore, all active destinies have their effects doubled (example - The ability score boosts in Sentinel would now grant +2 per tier instead of +1, Adrenaline Overload grants an 800% damage boost instead of 400%). This feat becomes inactive when more destinies are added.


Problem/Question #1: What happens to the fate points when you TR seeing as you lose all levels from unbonded destinies?

Solution #2a: If we lose fate points - don't let us lose fate points. Please! :)

Solution #2b: If we don't, make it to where we can eventually twist more than three slots(?)


Problem #2: Having players lose Epic Destiny exp from non-bonded destinies just from a Heroic TR is a bad idea. Such a bad idea that I feel it would gravely penalize those who simply want to TR out of a build that becomes invalidated (read, worthless from a nerf to some gameplay feature, bug, or "balance" pass).

Solution #2: Heroic TRing should be left as it is - you don't lose any Epic destiny exp, but you also don't get Epic Destiny past life feats.

Problem #3: +2 stat points to make a 38-point build (and only a 38-point build) seems kinda trivial for what is incurred, and is not much incentive to TR (especially if all we have to show for each destiny TR is a meager feat that almost isn't the sacrifice to gain it).

Solution #3: Enable players to get as high as 44-point builds (this would encourage multiple Destiny TR's, imo).


Question #2: Will Iconic Past Life feats benefit non-iconic characters when you TR out of them, and will they be benefits that are locked to a specific class/race (I.E. Bladeforged PL's benefitting only warforged and Paladins, and not really benefitting anyone else)?


Problem #4: Non-bonded Epic Destiny levels being placed into heroic levels seems rather... flawed.

Solution #4: Epic Destiny exp should not be poured into heroic leveling... at least, not against our will. At the very least, let us choose when to apply that exp with regards to applying exp (this wouldn't be too bad in the level 18-20 range). However, it would be preferable to keep Epic and Heroic Exp totally seperate (see far above).


Thanks for all the responses so far everyone. The team will try to address the details as best we can this early in development. Here are a few more clarifications as we’re reviewing your comments:

• Our intention is that players will be able to earn or buy Epic Destiny TR hearts of wood.
• We’ll continue to add more epic level content so that players have a variety of paths for leveling.
• To engage with Epic Destiny TR, you don’t have to have all destinies maxed out. Character level 28 + one maxed destiny is when you can bond your first destiny.
• We are revisiting XP curves in not only the Heroic levels but also the Epic levels. This would make leveling (and ultimately bonding) a Destiny a faster process compared to the current pace.
• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

We are also making balance changes to compensate for the fact that the system goes into higher levels, and we expect that parts of the design summary will seem less harsh once these details are better understood. We’ll be reading discussion in this thread and will continue to post here with more details as we go (such as details regarding Fate Points, Completionist, and the exact effects of turning in your Epic Destiny xp on your new life).

[Daemoneyes]

Thanks for all the responses so far everyone. The team will try to address the details as best we can this early in development. Here are a few more clarifications as we’re reviewing your comments:

• Our intention is that players will be able to earn or buy Epic Destiny TR hearts of wood.
• We’ll continue to add more epic level content so that players have a variety of paths for leveling.
• To engage with Epic Destiny TR, you don’t have to have all destinies maxed out. Character level 28 + one maxed destiny is when you can bond your first destiny.
• We are revisiting XP curves in not only the Heroic levels but also the Epic levels. This would make leveling (and ultimately bonding) a Destiny a faster process compared to the current pace.
• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

We are also making balance changes to compensate for the fact that the system goes into higher levels, and we expect that parts of the design summary will seem less harsh once these details are better understood. We’ll be reading discussion in this thread and will continue to post here with more details as we go (such as details regarding Fate Points, Completionist, and the exact effects of turning in your Epic Destiny xp on your new life).

That is the BIGGEST BS i have ever seen!
I had to grind my way through complete garbage ED on all my chars because you dont let us start where we want.
And now you want me to give up all that hatefull grinden ED xp?

Go and ask Dr.Who if he borrows you his Sonic Device because you can Sonic Device yourself!

The only good thing is that i did not buy the xpac yet and if that BS goes live i will just quit.
Because this is the last straw.
All that ED GRIND for nothing...

[Daemoneyes]

Thanks for all the responses so far everyone. The team will try to address the details as best we can this early in development. Here are a few more clarifications as we’re reviewing your comments:

• Our intention is that players will be able to earn or buy Epic Destiny TR hearts of wood.
• We’ll continue to add more epic level content so that players have a variety of paths for leveling.
• To engage with Epic Destiny TR, you don’t have to have all destinies maxed out. Character level 28 + one maxed destiny is when you can bond your first destiny.
• We are revisiting XP curves in not only the Heroic levels but also the Epic levels. This would make leveling (and ultimately bonding) a Destiny a faster process compared to the current pace.
• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

We are also making balance changes to compensate for the fact that the system goes into higher levels, and we expect that parts of the design summary will seem less harsh once these details are better understood. We’ll be reading discussion in this thread and will continue to post here with more details as we go (such as details regarding Fate Points, Completionist, and the exact effects of turning in your Epic Destiny xp on your new life).

That is the BIGGEST BS i have ever seen!
I had to grind my way through complete garbage ED on all my chars because you dont let us start where we want.
And now you want me to give up all that hatefull grinden ED xp?

Go and ask Dr.Who if he borrows you his Sonic Device because you can Sonic Device yourself!

The only good thing is that i did not buy the xpac yet and if that BS goes live i will just quit.
Because this is the last straw.
All that hateful souleating ED GRIND for nothing...

[Daemoneyes]

Well and while you borrowed that Sonic Device use it on your Forums to because they still suck
had to triple login, double header and i was dumb enough to take a peek on it without stylebot which made me throw up.

[QuickSlick79]

So what happens to our Fate Points? Hm?

I would LOVE an answer on that. Do those all get lost with every TR?

[PNellesen]

Dear DDO Development Team:

I will pay top dollar for whatever substance it was that you injected/inhaled/imbibed/absorbed before you sat down around the table and came up with this scheme.

TOP DOLLAR!

Thanks,

A formerly enthusiastic DDO player.

[GeoffWatson]

If the "Lose all destiny XP when TRing" thing goes through I'll be very disappointed.

My Monk will simply never TR as she has maxxed most of the destinies, and would lose too much for what would probably be minor gain. I had planned on Tring her for some past life feats and more build points, but losing ALL destiny XP is crazy.

My soon-to-be-Completionist is the big loser. I'd lose a lot of epic XP for no benefit (I level/TR with my guild, and they wouldn't want to wait for the 5 or 6 million epic XP to reach 28th). He has all destinies at level 3 or 4.

My other characters don't lose much; they have only two or three destinies. The Epic past lifes would have to be really good to be worth grinding to 28th though.

Geoff.
PS: I was thinking it would be something like "Reset an ED to level 0, get some minor bonus." That would probably be too easy though.

[Atremus]

A formerly enthusiastic DDO player.

It's like a hot frying pan to the face of failures.

That Dev avoiding the real question confirms that we lose ED XP at every TR.

At what point does it make sense to give up 20+ Million XP only to have to re-farm that same XP? I have tried to put reasoning behind it, but I just don't see it. Any EPIC past life better be so overpowered that we can't refuse to TR.... Then you introduce even more power creep into the game and make it more broken...

You have given up on the epic destiny system and turned it into a punishment if you follow through with this change. Regardless of the "it takes 1 day in my basement" crowd, some spend months farming that kind of XP out. Some of us were happy to level a destiny every TR, then TR again, level another destiny and so on....


The only way around this is that if you have a capped destiny and do an Epic TR, you get the Past Life Feat.

[Gremmlynn]

I'm absolutely astonished that Turbine found a way to take the worst most hated grind in the history of any MMO anywhere and make it more horrible.

Ponderous, fricking ponderous.

I'm so waiting for one of the fanbois to come out and defend this, it'll be glorious.Not to be that fanboi, but if this is what they had come out with a year ago, it actually would have made some sense. In that case the normal progression would have been to cap epic levels, earning an appropriate destiny in the early levels that allowed players to play their way through the later levels more than grind them, then TR. A second option would have been to earn several destinies on their way to cap to start their next life a bit further ahead. The third, worst, option, for those who don't play the whole TR game, would have been to do what they actually gave us at that time and grind out all the destinies in one life.

Instead they gave everyone the worst option only to pull the carpet out from under them now that, for many, the worst is already done.

They don't even seem to have the good sense to sweeten the deal by offering, say, a bonus fate point for each destiny that they manage to get bonded. After all, the main point of leveling them all the first time was to gain more fate points. It seems there would be less friction if this change continued that trend. Better yet would be an option to either keep their destinies or trade them in for that for that point and the ED past life when they epic TR.

[ArcaneArcher52689]

I am excited to start sharing our plans for the future of the Reincarnation system! Later this year (targeting Update 20) we look forward to introducing two new TR destinations, Epic Destiny True Reincarnation and Iconic True Reincarnation. We’ve got some minor improvements involving Lesser and Greater Reincarnation in store, as well.


We’ve seen a number of questions and discussions about TR, Iconics, and the TR / end-game gap. For the expansion pack, we are focused on ensuring that the new races are fun and playable, the content is fun and beautiful, and that the enhancement system changes launch as expected! With that, we plan to build out the TR system later in the year. The team is also taking the time to get your early feedback as the designers and engineers lock down feature plans. - How does this fit (or change) your playstyle? Read on for details, then let us know!

A few goals for Epic Destiny TR:



Extend Reincarnation system to allow for 38-point builds
Include Epic Destinies in the TR cycle (with Epic Destiny Past Life Feats)
Reward you for additional investment in Epic Destinies (with starting ranks after TR)
Adjust the XP curve in Epic levels for multi-life TR to avoid the dramatic escalating grind
Include Iconics in the TR cycle (with Iconic Past Life Feats)
Allow you to TR into and out of Iconics (if you own Iconics)


How does this system look in practice?

Heroic True Reincarnation



Heroic TR remains primarily unchanged at level 20 or above
Grants a Class Past Life Feat that can stack up to 3x
Adds 2 build points up to a 36 point build
Benefits from the Epic Advantage if you earn Epic Destinies before TR (below)


Epic Destiny True Reincarnation



Can be taken at Level Cap (Level 28 with Shadowfell Conspiracy)
Grants an Epic Destiny Past Life Feat

Feat based on active, maximized Epic Destiny


Karmic Bond -The active ED’s experience is now bonded through each ED True Reincarnation going forward
Grants a Class Past Life Feat (same as Heroic TR)
You must have a maximized, non-bonded ED to complete this TR
Adds 2 build points up to a 38 point build


Epic Advantage


With any type of True Reincarnation, all Epic Destiny Levels earned will give you an advantage when you rebuild your character, by converting Destiny Levels into Heroic Ranks. Every level of Epic Destiny you have earned will count toward ranks earned for your next life. (Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR.)

Iconic True Reincarnation

That’s right; Iconics will have their own form of True Reincarnation, earning their own unique set of past-life feats. You will also be able to TR from any character into an Iconic, which begins at level 15, like normal. Epic Advantage also works on both ends, as well, transferring ED XP earned in your Iconic life, and, if you TR into an Iconic, adding XP on top of your level 15 starting XP.Can be taken at Level Cap (Level 28 with Shadowfell Conspiracy)



Grants an Iconic Past Life Feat that can stack up to 3x
Adds 2 build points up a 36 point build
Earns ranks from Epic Advantage


What else?

Here are some changes we’re currently exploring:



Reincarnation cooldown timer reduced to 3 days.
Reincarnation XP curves smoothed to ease penalties for multiple lives.
Lesser Reincarnation will allow a Heroic character to reincarnate as a Champion. Greater Reincarnation will no longer be sold, in favor of an improved Lesser Reincarnation.
Iconic characters will be able to Lesser Reincarnate


We are eager to begin production on this system and appreciate the many players that are eager to see us fulfill the end game potential that the TR system presents. With these changes we are also keeping a long-term view for TR, such as how to expand the Epic Destiny system and continue to support level cap growth in the future.


Our sincere intentions are to provide these features to you, and the DDO community at large. We invite you response to these details and thank you for your support and fortitude while we roll these changes out in support of this year’s expansion pack. The team is thrilled that DDO continues to grow, innovate, and provide a great D&D experience.


This system does have a lot of potential. But the biggest issue is that heroic/iconic TR should not mess with epic destiny XP. Ever.

However, while that would probably calm some of the crowd, You still need to figure out how to deal with the people who'd want to do the epic TR without losing all their benefits. The most fair thing I can think of would be to allow a 1 month period after the release where a person could epic TR and gain ALL the epic past lives and bond EACH destiny. If they miss the 2 month(or whatever time limit, but i'd say 2 months would be the minimum, since they'd have to hit lvl 28 too)

Next, as for Epic advantage, as others have said, 1 ED level >>> 1 heroic rank, at least at low levels. So, i definitely think it should be more than a 1-1 ratio. However, if you let us apply them whenever we want them, then that'd be great. Don't want to do GH? skip it. Don't want to grind 18-20? Skip it. Of course, then there's one more thing you ahve to worry about. What do you do for the people who don't spend those ranks? Ideally, let us convert them back to ED ranks. So, if 1 ED level= 2.5 free ranks, then let us convert any left over free ranks past lvl 20 into ED ranks. At a 2:1 or even 3:1 ratio. This way, if i'm 28 with 2 maxed out destinies and 2 levels in a third, I'd receive 20 free ranks (8 Epic levels=4 heroic). Let's say I choose to use 10 of them to skip 18-20. Now I have 10 left. I can later choose to put them into a destiny that i don't really want to level, like magister or Shiradi. This would make it easier to max out the useless destinies for the epic TR's.

Either way, I think the biggest issue is that Heroic/iconic TR should not reset Epic Destiny XP.

[sneerie]

You need to reward folks with have ground out their epic destinies more before you implement this. However... TR'ing is optional, not required. It's not a nerf unless they take something you have away from you... you decide if you want to TR and "start fresh".

One more thought:

There is nothing wrong with the ability to get XP (especially with all the boosts, potions, etc...). I would however suggest the xp be ironed out a bit. Run a couple of reports on which quests are ran least frequently (or failed most frequently), and adjust the xp up on those (and maybe down on some others...) accordingly. If you have to spend 15 minutes getting to a quest (e.g. 3 barrel cove), it should be rewarded accordingly. If Coyle likes to run into now uber sonic traps and die... the xp should go up there as well.

And all quests where you MUST be flagged to enter (no-red door) should continue to be rewarded handsomely.

[LadyKoneko]

Thanks for all the responses so far everyone. The team will try to address the details as best we can this early in development. Here are a few more clarifications as we’re reviewing your comments:

• True Reincarnation has always been about giving up your current life in exchange for increased power in your next life. We are early enough in the design work that we want to also hear ideas from players on what types of destiny feats they’d like to see in their next life in exchange for reincarnating their destinies.

And what do you at turbine view all maxed EDS with unlocked fate points, people that used pots(xp or slayer), people that used key's of destiny, etc is worth? Starting at level 11? with X past lives (already earned) and 1 ED feats?

In addition to punishing everyone that has already farmed out their EDs, you are now punishing people with multiple toons. I had 22 toons, 26 now with your (sarcasm) wonderful (/sarcasm) pre-order, and realistically do you think I can farm out EDs on all of them? Though to be honest I never intended to on ALL 22. Do really think people will be able to play multiple toons? No, well maybe 2 or 3. So then you're going to make people start to pick a few of their alts, for some this is already the case.. making classes that are less fun to play even more uncommon as it will too hard to get multiple toons capped and farmed out.

[nayozz]

can you add the ability to "bank" any amount of xp ?

right now you can bank at max 2 levels of xp...

if i get more than 15 free rank, i would like to be able to bank them, play game from level 1 and cash the xp when i reach abot level 15


also: i feel tr2 xp at level 15 becomes too much, so the 15-20 should be lowered in xp for tr2

------------
edit: i would like to be able to start at level 1 and still cash in the extra xp...

some ideas could be to give the bonus ranks all over the 20 levels... for example if you have 15 bonus ranks: from level 1 to 15 you only have to earn 4 ranks to level up...

if you got 55 bonus ranks instead of starting at level 11 you start at level 1 but need to earn only 3 ranks to level up from 1 to 18, while you need only 4 ranks to level up to 19 and 20

[Zillee]

Well, given that the ED past lifes are going to have to be pretty special to give up all the unbonded EDs and they're wanting suggestions ...

Past Life: Legendary Dreadnought:You were a legendary dreadnought in an epic past life. You occasionally dream of blitzing through a full dungeon leaving a bloody trail. Every time you come top of the kill count list, a pizza is delievered to your player's destination by a dancing unicorn.

[Cyr]

My thoughts on how to make this less of a let's just shut down the game at this point moment for DDO...

1) Losing destiny XP on a non-epic TR is a do not pass go idea. Get rid of this idea not hard earned destiny XP gained under an existing system where people rightly assumed their gains were not transitory.

2) Epic advantage...yeah skipping low levels is a bad idea. It will always be a bad idea for design to include this. What is more, the cost/benefit ratio for this is a joke...high costing epic levels for cheap and easy low levels...just bad. So instead change this to be a percentage increase to ALL XP (epic and not) for that life which stacks with all existing bonuses. Have bonded levels give you a 1% per level (as you sacrifice less that life from those bonded levels) and non-bonded destiny levels give a 3% bonus per level...yeah there will be some really fast TRS from those who are getting shafted more or less and losing fully capped destinies except one...big deal. It might stop the servers from shutting down after this hits live. This also gives the logical benefit to those who have clearly been there and done that ALOT. IE, TRs always should have had an inherent bonus per 'past life' to xp and this is a method of having epic TRs include this from the outset.

[MeliCat]

Well, given that the ED past lifes are going to have to be pretty special to give up all the unbonded EDs and they're wanting suggestions ...
.

Agreed.

"(Epic Destinies will not carry over to your next life, except those destinies that you have bonded in previous lives with ED TR.)"

Holy Cr4p man, are you for real?

And... twist points... I want to know if I at least keep those. And how I get across the circle if I'm wanting an ED that is not related to my heroic class - do I have to grind it out to get across the circle?

[droid327]

TLDR: 1) Preserve the work that vets have already put into maxing destinies. It shouldnt matter if they earn it later or earned it before. 2) Epic Advantage stands to make L1-11 content obsolete. 3) Iconics + Epic Advantage = start at L27

f you're just coming up in the new system, it seems what the "intent" is for Epic TR is pretty similar to what you do for Heroic TR....level up to 28, max one destiny, lock it in when you TR. Level back up to 28, max out another destiny, lock it in when you TR. So no Epic XP is ever "wasted".

The only real problem with that system would seem to be on rollout, when people with multiple maxed destinies have to choose only one to lock in. The extra Heroic ranks arent nearly enough to make up for it....its enough to catapult you to, what, L12 (one time) if you completely maxed out all 11 destinies? L12 is like 5-6 hours of playtime for most seasoned vets.

There's better ways to implement it. Someone else already mentioned, I saw, the idea that your selected destiny gets wiped on TR and you get the Epic PL for that destiny, and everything else stays where you left it.

Another idea that might address the rollout issue is have it so that every maxed destiny gets "locked in" when you Epic TR, but you only choose one for the Epic PL. That preserves the exact same amount of work per Epic PL to max everything for both new players and vets...

-New player: levels up to 28, maxes one destiny, Epic TR. Repeats 11 times. 11 lives leveled 1-28, 11 destinies maxed.
-Vet player: already leveled up at least once to 28, and maxed all destinies. Epic TR. Levels back up to 28, Epic TR. Repeat second step 10 times. 11 lives leveled 1-28, 11 destinies maxed (just all at once, before the first Epic TR).

---------

Also, completely differnet subject: If you've already run through Epic XP 11 times, are you locked out of the system? It said you "must have a maxed, UNBONDED Destiny" to be able to Epic TR. Once you've bonded them all, are you stuck? Or do you just Heroic TR and still get your Epic Advantage in the next life? So every Heroic TR from then on starts at L12?

Triple Completionist just got a whole lot easier if you complete your Epic TRs first...and any content under L12 just got made a lot more obsolete. I thought the point of the TR system was to keep lower level content relevant..?

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Third problem: Twelfth-life Iconics start at 15 and get enough Epic Advantage ranks for 11 levels = start at L27? Those Iconic PLs are going to be very trivial to get....

[Gremmlynn]

Who are you to tell anyone anything about how they should play a game?I would guess one of the people that the whole system is being turned on it's head to keep up with.

Basically, instead of fixing the game so window zerging isn't viable, they are changing it to account for it and to hell with all those who did things the hard way.

[Ziindarax]

I'd like to add to the post I made on the previous page (which ironically got ignored due to it's length):

Introduce "Sphere Mastery": With "Sphere Mastery", in addition to all the goodies I mentioned in #1, you'd get a stacking bonus relevant to the destiny belonging to a respective sphere. For example, In the Primal Sphere, bonding all three destinies in that sphere would grant you +10 dodge, 15 PRR, and 6% doublestrike/extra-shot chance.

Also, let's do Epic Destiny PL feats with a twist - Containing both an active component, as well as an inactive component. The inactive component (the passive component) of a feat would grant you a benefit relevant to the playstyle that a specific destiny represents (I.E. Shiradi would gives benefits that benefitted both ranged and caster builds, Sentinel would give you better AC and PRR, and Dreadnaught would amplify your weapon damage and tactical DC's by a fair amount. The active component would stack with the passive component of the feat, but would only grant that benefit while the same destiny is active.

For example, if you had a past life as a Legendary Dreadnaught, and chose to remain in Dreadnaught, you would actively gain an additional +2W to your weapon damage. Additionally, a lesser version of this benefit could be granted if you're using a destiny adjacent to the past life destiny. For example, Grandmaster, Shadowdancer, and Shiradi Champion would all gain +1W damage to all weapons as long as they are in those destinies. Destinies further away would only get +.5W to all weapon damage.

The reason I say, "destinies further away..." is because Exalted Angel only links to Unyielding Sentinel, and Angel does grant some melee options (as well as casting options). Thus, it makes sense if all Destiny past lives had not only a passive component, but also an active component that somehow interacted with the other destinies?

Would anyone care to share their thoughts on this (and the post quoted below, please excuse the wall of text.)?


Since we're talking about changing the way TRing works, I'd like to start with one of my MAJOR pet peeves with the TR system:

TR cache. Let's face it, over each character's life, we accumulate items and what not that are useful to us (and for many of us, we also take the time to accumulate loot that will benefit our next planned life [or lives]). Problem is, we simply don't have enough inventory/bank space to store all the junk we accumulate (and while it is true that you can probably destroy a good amount of it, eventually, it's going to get to a point where all "junk" you have in your TR cache is valuable, hard-to-obtain loot that you don't want to throw away).

My suggestion: Either make it so you don't have to clear out your TR cache before you TR, OR offer us Supreme Enchanted Bags of Holding (SEBoH) that work like Colossal bags that are capable of holding THOUSANDS of unique items (complete with a search function as with the other bags, and also adding an advanced search/organization feature to quickly and more easily find desired items). Should you go along with the route of adding supreme enchanted bags, there are two critical functions that need to be added to make this work.

a) GM-Flagging: Basically, whenever you put in (or remove) an item from this bag, it leaves a flag or tracer for a GM/Turbine Account staff. The purpose of this is to prevent situations wherein if the player, for whatever reason, winds up LOSING their Supreme Enchanted Bags of Holding (usually by glitch) via TR'ing or whatever (and by extension, EVERYTHING they put into the now lost bag), it would enable a GM/Turbine Account staff to quickly find and retreive those items. This feature would also work in such a way that items stored within other bags that THEN wind up into the SEBoH would also be recorded so no one has to worry about losing collectables (such as Flawless Red Dragon scales), or Ingredients (such as that once-in-a-millenium-super-ultra-hyper-rare Shard of the Ring of Spell Storing) in the event that the bag gets lost.

b) Multi-selector: Another annoying feature of TR caches is that you must Meticulously, and painstakingly empty your cache ONE. ITEM. AT. A. TIME. These SEBoH's should offer the ability to select multiple items (or even the ability to take ALL of them out at once, if one should so desire), and with a single click, receive those items.

As for the rest, here are my 10 cents (with questions mixed in):

Problem #1: Your "Epic Advantage" is only really "Epic" if you TR into an Iconic (seeing as you start at level 15, and could potentially be boosted to level 20). In practice, this does more harm than good (even for Iconics) because it currently takes a considerable amount of time to level or farm a destiny without experience potions, and with your current proposition, it seems flat out wasteful to TR.

Proposed Solution #1: Epic Advantage should MEAN Epic Advantage; when you Epic TR, you should receive: either SP or HP (depending on the destiny you "bonded" with), a MEANINGFUL boost granted by the epic destiny (for example, those who TR'ed bonding with Legendary Dreadnaught should receive a stacking +20 boost to the DC's of their tactical abilities [+20 may seem like a lot, but really it's not when you consider the inflated saves of enemy mobs, especially Epic Elites]), AND... a flag.

Yes, a flag - When you ED TR a certain number of times, you get additional benefits. Below is a rough outline of what I have in mind:

2-3 destinies bonded: a stacking +20 boost to your universal spell power, +2% to hit and damage with all weapons, and +1 to all saves.

4 destinies bonded - Your knowledge of the Universe has expanded greatly, and you have become proficient with manipulating your fate - As such, you are now able to have two epic destinies active at any given time (though only one of them can be bonded).

5-6 destinies bonded: the boosts provided in #1 increases to +50 stacking boost to your universal spell power, +5% to hit and damage with all weapons, and +3 to all saves. The DC's of ALL your spells (if applicable) are increased by +5.

7 Destinies bonded: You receive 4 additional action points for each of the destinies you've bonded with so far. This would allow a player to unlock more abilities (or ability scores), thus granting greater benefits.

8 Destinies bonded: You permanently receive 2 additional epic feat slots (one at level 22, and another at level 25).


9 Destinies bonded: *like the 7 destinies bonded tier, but for nine destinies.*


10 Destinies bonded: Sage of the Ages: Your knowledge of the Universe continues to grow - you can now have 3 destinies active at any given time.

11 Destinies bonded/Completionist: A Deity Amongst Mortals - Your understanding of the Universe has expanded to such a degree that you've nearly become a god. Passive feat - You gain +8 stacking boost to all ability scores and skills. Your Spellpower (if applicable) is increased by 200, your spell DC's are increased by 20, and your to-hit and weapon damage is increased by 20. Furthermore, all active destinies have their effects doubled (example - The ability score boosts in Sentinel would now grant +2 per tier instead of +1, Adrenaline Overload grants an 800% damage boost instead of 400%). This feat becomes inactive when more destinies are added.


Problem/Question #1: What happens to the fate points when you TR seeing as you lose all levels from unbonded destinies?

Solution #2a: If we lose fate points - don't let us lose fate points. Please! :)

Solution #2b: If we don't, make it to where we can eventually twist more than three slots(?)


Problem #2: Having players lose Epic Destiny exp from non-bonded destinies just from a Heroic TR is a bad idea. Such a bad idea that I feel it would gravely penalize those who simply want to TR out of a build that becomes invalidated (read, worthless from a nerf to some gameplay feature, bug, or "balance" pass).

Solution #2: Heroic TRing should be left as it is - you don't lose any Epic destiny exp, but you also don't get Epic Destiny past life feats.

Problem #3: +2 stat points to make a 38-point build (and only a 38-point build) seems kinda trivial for what is incurred, and is not much incentive to TR (especially if all we have to show for each destiny TR is a meager feat that almost isn't the sacrifice to gain it).

Solution #3: Enable players to get as high as 44-point builds (this would encourage multiple Destiny TR's, imo).


Question #2: Will Iconic Past Life feats benefit non-iconic characters when you TR out of them, and will they be benefits that are locked to a specific class/race (I.E. Bladeforged PL's benefitting only warforged and Paladins, and not really benefitting anyone else)?


Problem #4: Non-bonded Epic Destiny levels being placed into heroic levels seems rather... flawed.

Solution #4: Epic Destiny exp should not be poured into heroic leveling... at least, not against our will. At the very least, let us choose when to apply that exp with regards to applying exp (this wouldn't be too bad in the level 18-20 range). However, it would be preferable to keep Epic and Heroic Exp totally seperate (see far above).

[MeliCat]

Can we have some practical examples please?

So for example I currently have a character that has 3 ranger past lives, a wiz PL, a sorc PL, and I was going to make an artificer but I've deicided I'll be an moncher for a while. So while I was on my last sorc life I grinded out all the arcane EDs but I started in Shiradi as that was where my last ranger past life left me. So now I'm on a monk mix I'm slowly leveling and maxing out my melee EDs. I have a 4,1 twist point setting at the moment.

With this system right now if I did deciced yep I want to finish off a couple more sorc lives and then go on my final artificer life, I would have to just dump all my ED experience pretty much except one tree (I have 4 totally capped out and 2 mostly capped out ones to choose from). What happens to my twists? Do they stay there? Say I keep the shiradi tree, then go to my sorc life, which tree can I then start in when I reach 20 again? only the trees next to shiradi or one of the arcane trees?

[Ziindarax]

@droid: I am pretty sure the devs said that you'd get HEROIC ranks for each Epic Destiny level lost. Meaning, you would only get enough ranks as an iconic to reach level 20, not 27. >.>

Still, I agree that Iconics will greatly trivialize the journey to completionist (and to the point of cheapening it entirely; especially when you consider those who achieved completionist the hard way going from 1-20+ each time).

@Developers - While we're on the subject of Iconics, WHY are the Bladeforged being regarded as "fleshlings" by the captured Bladesworn in House C, and why do the Bladeforged sound like Humans? For the first, Bladeforged should be even MORE highly regarded than the Warforged whom the captured Bladesworn considers a brother.


TLDR: 1) Preserve the work that vets have already put into maxing destinies. It shouldnt matter if they earn it later or earned it before. 2) Epic Advantage stands to make L1-11 content obsolete. 3) Iconics + Epic Advantage = start at L27

f you're just coming up in the new system, it seems what the "intent" is for Epic TR is pretty similar to what you do for Heroic TR....level up to 28, max one destiny, lock it in when you TR. Level back up to 28, max out another destiny, lock it in when you TR. So no Epic XP is ever "wasted".

The only real problem with that system would seem to be on rollout, when people with multiple maxed destinies have to choose only one to lock in. The extra Heroic ranks arent nearly enough to make up for it....its enough to catapult you to, what, L12 (one time) if you completely maxed out all 11 destinies? L12 is like 5-6 hours of playtime for most seasoned vets.

There's better ways to implement it. Someone else already mentioned, I saw, the idea that your selected destiny gets wiped on TR and you get the Epic PL for that destiny, and everything else stays where you left it.

Another idea that might address the rollout issue is have it so that every maxed destiny gets "locked in" when you Epic TR, but you only choose one for the Epic PL. That preserves the exact same amount of work per Epic PL to max everything for both new players and vets...

-New player: levels up to 28, maxes one destiny, Epic TR. Repeats 11 times. 11 lives leveled 1-28, 11 destinies maxed.
-Vet player: already leveled up at least once to 28, and maxed all destinies. Epic TR. Levels back up to 28, Epic TR. Repeat second step 10 times. 11 lives leveled 1-28, 11 destinies maxed (just all at once, before the first Epic TR).

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Also, completely differnet subject: If you've already run through Epic XP 11 times, are you locked out of the system? It said you "must have a maxed, UNBONDED Destiny" to be able to Epic TR. Once you've bonded them all, are you stuck? Or do you just Heroic TR and still get your Epic Advantage in the next life? So every Heroic TR from then on starts at L12?

Triple Completionist just got a whole lot easier if you complete your Epic TRs first...and any content under L12 just got made a lot more obsolete. I thought the point of the TR system was to keep lower level content relevant..?

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Third problem: Twelfth-life Iconics start at 15 and get enough Epic Advantage ranks for 11 levels = start at L27? Those Iconic PLs are going to be very trivial to get....