Obsoleting ingredients/collectables

[Snarglefrump]

We are unable to offer a trade-in for your old Motes due to them being duplicated in very large quantities by a relatively small number of players, combined with their ability to be freely traded. It is always disappointing and unfortunate when cheaters ruin the experience of others, but this is one of those times, we are sorry to say.

Have you considered other options? Here is one way of looking at it.

Requirements:

Give legit players (presumably a large majority) something for their old items that they worked hard to collect.
Don't convert game-breaking amounts of old-items into game-breaking amounts of new items.

Suggested solution:

Create a trader that will rummage through all of a player's items (inventory, banks, inside bags, etc.) and give them some new items according to: new items = log(old items)
Players will get some new stuff, which is better than nothing.
Cheaters will also get some stuff, but not game-breaking amounts.
I'm fond of ?, the golden ratio (1.618), as the base of the logarithm, but whatever floats your boat.

[kned225]

Again?

If you're referring to Mabar ingredients, it's too late

The minute the devs tell us to go ahead and get rid of something, you can't reverse that decision. It would be grossly unfair to the people who chose to destroy their stuff

As it stands now, it's fair. We all had the chance to collect and turn in our ingredients

Why is this so hard for people to understand?

Let go of the junk

[Snarglefrump]

I'm thinking of the future, not the past.

[kned225]

I'm thinking of the future, not the past.


Fair enough

Still not something i want precious development time wasted on. Not when they have important things to work on, like Bigbys Pointy Arrow

[Enoach]

In the history of events with Turbine they have only had the following made obsolete

1. Birthday Cakes
2. Anniversary Cards
3. Mabar <- Most recent

Events like Winter Festival have been going on since the beginning over time the turn ins have changed but the three basic Copper, Silver and Gold coins have stayed the same. Risia Festival has been going on and while it was expanded to Eveningstar the ingredients have remained pretty much the same.

So far the three events and ingredients were discontinued due to the Ingredients having and issue, turn in system or the event itself.

I don't think Turbine needs to reimburse us. The only exception is with the early shutdown of Mabar that prevented people who had started but could not finish. But I also feel the Mimic Festival was their reimbursement.

[Zavier]

Again?

As it stands now, it's fair. We all had the chance to collect and turn in our ingredients

Why is this so hard for people to understand?

Here is the thing: Turbine is responsible for this debacle. Time and time again, Turbine has sabotaged their own game. The Treasure of Crystal Cove event which decimated the economy in its first incarnation comes to mind, first and foremost. Next up comes their complete inability to stop large scale duping of large greensteel ingredients. For weeks on end there were 100 stacks of Larges on the AH. Where those ingredients deprecated? No. Next up includes large scale stone duping, raid timer duping, shard duping. Let us not forget the guild xp bonanza in the Orchard.

So I am not sure why they are so bent on punishing the Mabar crowd but it surely makes Turbine look like hypocrites at the very least.

[Ykt]

Let us not forget the guild xp bonanza in the Orchard.

Do not speak of this, you might upset the author of the All Server Guild List Lvl 175+ (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/453588-All-Server-Guild-List-Lvl-175)

There was no such thing as exploiting guild renown, all renown was earned legitimately.

There was no lvl 10 wizard, lone member of a formerly unknown guild (which is now in the aforementioned guild list), suddenly gaining tens of levels by simply being in the public area of the Necropolis near the collectables traders, with a never depleting 200% renown potion effect.

All is fine. :)

[KristinS]

In the history of events with Turbine they have only had the following made obsolete

1. Birthday Cakes
2. Anniversary Cards
3. Mabar <- Most recent

<snip>

I don't think Turbine needs to reimburse us. The only exception is with the early shutdown of Mabar that prevented people who had started but could not finish. But I also feel the Mimic Festival was their reimbursement.


With the Anniversary Cards Turbine apparently had problems with duping early on. IIRC, early in the event they did a hotfix to address issues (duping). Regardless, there were at least a few people running around with 10+ of the ultra-rare cards within a few days of the event starting.

Despite this, the only adjustment Turbine made was they decided to not allow Anniversary Cards to be sold in the Shard Exchange (contrary to their earlier announcements). They didn't shorten the event, they didn't make the cards bound, and they didn't deprecate the cards until over 6 months later. In the meantime, the cards could be freely traded between players, and the cards could be freely turned in for rewards. Even when they did terminate the ability to turn in cards for rewards, they announced it well in advance, giving players weeks to complete their trades.

That's radically different than Mabar, where Turbine shut down the event nearly 2 weeks early after giving only 3 days notice (which you wouldn't necessarily even have known about initially, if you don't regularly read the forums). They also said the event would return eventually, and to hang on to your materials. They eventually decided that the event couldn't be brought back because they couldn't solve the lag problems, but they never gave anyone any opportunity to trade in materials for rewards after the early, abrupt shutdown of the event. They also gave no advance notice that the materials were going to be deprecated -- although this doesn't really matter, since (unlike the Anniversary Cards) they also didn't give us the means to do anything with the Mabar materials.

Since officially the only reason we were given for the event closure was performance issues, and since the Mabar trader didn't cause any performance issues, this is fairly inexplicable to me.

Turbine never said that duping of Mabar materials was a serious issue (I know, they usually don't like to acknowledge or discuss these issues). More importantly, they didn't *act* like this was an important issue. They continued allowing these materials to be traded, sold in the AH, and sold in the Shard Exchange for nearly two years before they marked the items as deprecated (and they are still allowing them to be traded or auctioned, last I saw). Presumably they long ago solved the duping issue while they were addressing many of the other duping issues in the game, but otherwise they never made any adjustments at all to address any severe Mabar duping issue.

What is more remarkable, the Anniversary Card rewards arguably had far more lasting game impact: Raid Timer Bypasses, XP pots, Slayer pots, Mana pots, Stat tomes, Skill tomes, and lots of other cool and useful stuff (including Ruby Eye augments, Huge bags, and several nice Eternal Flasks if you had some of the ultra-rare cards). By comparison, Mabar had a few moderately useful pieces of niche gear, much of which doesn't get used very much by most players, along with a few useful pots that don't have the sort of game impact as the tomes and elixirs available using Anniversary Cards.

The inconsistency is so great that I don't really believe that Mabar material duping is the primary motivation for Turbine's decision in this case. I think Turbine just decided that the number of people who still had Mabar materials, and who might be unhappy with Turbine just making them obsolete, was low enough that they didn't want to bother giving us one last chance at redemption.

[KristinS]

tl;dr version of previous post:

Duping of Anniversary Cards was serious enough to motivate Turbine to prevent those cards from being auctioned and to (seemingly) issue a duping hot fix. Many of the rewards that were available arguably have significantly greater game impact than the Mabar rewards. Yet the cards could still be redeemed for 6 months after the event ended, and we were given several weeks notice before they were finally deprecated.

Duping of Mabar materials was apparently not serious enough to require action during the event, or until long after the event. The last instance of the event was ended fairly abruptly nearly 2 weeks early. We were told the event would return eventually, and to hold onto our materials. The materials continued to be freely auctionable. Eventually, we were told the Mabar performance issues are unsolvable. Nearly two years after the event was terminated prematurely, the Mabar materials were marked as deprecated without any advance warning, and without any further opportunity for players to trade them in. Afterwards, we were told the Mabar materials are now completely obsolete because of duping.

It's not a very satisfactory explanation, IMO, and it's certainly not a decision consistent with other similar instances.