It's time for Shard/Seal trade-ins for Ebberon epics

[Sonos]

I like that idea of throwing a couple shards on the 20th lists at the very least.

[bhgiant]

I like the idea of creating Masterful Shard/Seal and then increasing the rarity a bit. Scrolls can stay the way they are, there are plenty of them around and they are tradeable. If they did this though, I'd like to see it pack specific, ie, Masterful Shard of Sentinels of Stormreach.

[knockcocker]

When I'm farming something, I'll do rotations with 3-boxes. I have 3 toons at cap, so thats 3x7x3 = 63. Usually, within 63 pulls, I have what I'm after. If I don't, then I'll just buy it.

Are you saying that you have three accounts with 3+ level appropriate characters
which you will run consecutively 21 times for 63 pulls?

I really don't think this should be considered the norm or even admissible in
a discussion on drop rates.

I'm not trying to be rude here; I just think this is so far from most players
reality - perhaps I'm wrong?

Personnally, I work on weeks so my play time is reduced, but on saturday or sunday, I can play nearly all day so being able to get 63 pulls instead of 9 is great.

I'm sure it is but to use it as a rebuttal for the introduction of seal/shard
trade-ins seems somewhat far fetched to me.

The majority of players are going to be limited by the ransack timer
which is functionally equivalent to the old timer anyway (though it is more
forgiving in terms of scheduling).

Again, fundamentally there is no difference between pulling the seal you wanted
and the one[s] that you did not. The same criteria were fulfilled. All a 3:1
exchange system does is provide a point where the game concedes that you've done
'enough' to get what you were looking for. I'd also be in favour of a partial
list every (3,10,20 - whatever - completions) though obviously a larger list
depending on the number chosen.

I ransacked two toons on ESnitch yesterday. I pulled two seals - two Mask of
Tragedies. Very disappointing as there is still no end in sight...

[Necrofred]

The worst part about the old epic grind is the lack of an end in sight. Between two characters I have done Tide Turns 134 times--no midnight greeting shard. About 60 of these runs a friend has brought his caster to help with pulls, so I'm looking at a near 200 chest chances without receiving the right shard. I've had plenty of others show up, passed all the ones I was going to have copies of, and still am no closer to finishing my item.

Is this still really intended? For reference this is about 9.5 weeks worth of ransacking with two different characters and still no closer to it than when I begin. 134 chest pulls even with a full group would take 3 weeks, so I cannot see how this is very balanced at all. A barter system would be more than appropriate in my opinion. Have I not earned the right to finish my item after 134 runs of this quest? Is there any question that I have not put in the time?

I was going to try to make two for my dex rogue, but if I somehow manage to get the ingredients at one I'm giving up on ever bothering to try for a second. This road has been far too grindy as it is. I understand people wanting the most powerful items to stay rare, but why couldn't they take a look at the rarest, most powerful gear and label it as "artifacts" and omit them from the barter system? I.E. the ring of spell storing and sword of shadows (and etc) are legendary artifacts from long ago that no vendor is going to have spare parts for. Seems like it would be the easiest thing to do.

[bjones0064]

Sadly on the 9th it will mark my three year anniversary for No Shard of the Antique Greataxe. Ohh well.

[darkly_dreaming]

The worst part about the old epic grind is the lack of an end in sight.

This is the most important point in favor of revising the way of getting 'old' Epic items. It's not the grind, it's the uncertainty as to the length of the grind. If you're fortunate (like one of my guildies) you'll pull two shards of the Sword of Shadows within 20 runs of Evon. If you're not (like myself) you will run the raid hundreds of times on multiple characters and never pull it. How is that a system that 'rewards' your 'work'? It's completely arbitrary and an arbitrary system only serves to frustrate players.

A system that encourages replay, but at the same time gives a glimmer of hope that at some point you will be able to atain your goal is far more optimal. Either making that a trade in (say 20 random seals from an area to trade for 1 particular seal) or an end reward list on X number of completions. This has worked well for raids, it's encourages people to replay in case they pull the item they want, but gives them the (possible) opportunity to see it after completing a set number of times.

[caellwin]

do this, it's needed at this point of the game

[Fafnir]

I personally think the old, hard to complete, epic system is better than this new "easy, I get it all for nothing" system. If everyone is the same, then everyone is mediocre. If everyone has everything, then nothing is special. I don't know why everyone wants to be part of systems where you get white ribbons for participation.

[Oldraven]

Wrong thread, nothing to see here.

[RobbinB]

Why do people continually conflate luck and time with easy/hard?

When Epic was a difficultly level this mechanic kind of made sense as it
fitted well with the mindset of players who did Epic then. Now, it just
doesn't. Running something over and over and over again to get everything
but what you want is not hard. At all. It is frustrating though.

Nobody is asking for anything for free. As the claw set seems to be the example
du jour, what's the real material difference between pulling a claw shard or
a twisted talisman shard? - absolutely none apart from a question of luck. The
same criteria were fulfilled to get both.

All this thread is asking for is a horizon to bad luck.

The alternative is to massively up drop rates on Elite so it's worth running
though I prefer the idea I linked earlier - add superior and sovereign seals
to EH/EE to improve the base Eberron Epic item further.

How about taking the old eberron areas and adding in a few new endgame (lvl 25+) quests and having the superior/sovereign seals fall in those as well a low incidence of the old seals, shards, and scrolls?

[Forzah]

I personally think the old, hard to complete, epic system is better than this new "easy, I get it all for nothing" system. If everyone is the same, then everyone is mediocre. If everyone has everything, then nothing is special. I don't know why everyone wants to be part of systems where you get white ribbons for participation.

Yea. I'd actually prefer introducing a seal/shard system for the newer packs rather than changing it for the old packs (except for Desert which is quite nonfunctional).

[Ungood]

Is this stuff even worth doing the quest more then once for these days?

I mean, personally, with The Com Traders, where I can get easy epic gear, and fill the other slots with even easier to acquire loot-gen epic gear, isn't it time for the old epics to just become Loot drops as opposed to this shard/seal/scroll?

I know, I know, before you all skin me alive, hear me out, I was on my monk life, and had those Torn Chitin Bracers, which I up graded to the Jidz, then when I made 20th, I was like, getting an epic set of this would be cool. So I ran a few of the Sentitals epics, and after about 5 or six runs, I was got myself a set of The Sun Soul, and never looked back.

Really, at some point, The game changes, most (if not all) old epic stuff is nowhere near worth the grind that it takes to get it anymore, and if they have the funds to pay someone to revamp the entire loot-gen system, then they should have the funds to pay for a solid revision to the old epic loot.

Just saying.

[Gljosh]

/Signed. With the FR items and the recent upgrades to other items, a lot of the shine has fallen off the Eberron Epic items. Should I grind for X+Y^R*Luck to get 1/3 of what I need to make an item OR get a equal if not better item farming some comms for about 1~2 hours? I get that DDO is moving away from Eberron to force us to play FR quests, but there are quite a few Eborron packs that are already made so why not try to sell them as well.

[slarden]

/signed. 5 to 1 seems about right to me.

[sgz]

Quick question one might ask is why people are even still running this content if it's become frustrating for them?
As someone pointed out, you can get the new superior gear in 1/10th (or better) of the time it would take to complete an old epic item.

The old epic items aren't must have items anymore. They're more of a nice to have, I would guess at this point. So to answer my own question, why do I even run them still?

* I was doing mostly TRs pre-MOTU. I decided to stay at 20 and started running epics before MOTU came out. As an example, I was running E-Chrono a lot just like a lot of other people back then to complete the 5 item set. Think I had 1 scroll and 1 seal (out of 15 needed items to complete the set) by the time MOTU came out.

Now after something like almost 1.5-2 years later, i'm sitting at enough mats to make 2 sets of the same 3 items (cloak boot helm). Still nowhere near to completing my original goal, and at this point, the power level of the items aren't really the main draw to getting them... I'm still doing that content more to complete my original goal rather than anything else (the fact that they're still mats and not actually made items should give a hint on how truly "needed" they are now ).

Same thing with the Blademark's Docent from the Sentinels. I got the seal on my first run and quickly got the scroll after that. After about 10 runs of Tide, I went back to my TR game simply because after 10 runs, I saw 0 shards and maybe 1-2 scrolls . I'll get back to running this again full time after I'm closer to completionist ( Artificer being my last planned life ), again more for the sake of completing my goal rather than actually getting a power boost from the item. Then again, after putting in so much time into it at that point, I may as well use it past L20

So a trade in system (or 20th completion) at this point really just makes that grind more palatable, and doesn't really bring about that big a powerup.