Earning Hearts of Wood - post U20

[Henky]

Feedback received:
The prices on Lamannia are not final – inspired by the Lamannia feedback, the Heroic Heart of Wood will be greatly reduced from the price displayed in the bartershop today. We’ll be looking at your additional feedback and how players play through sagas, and adjust the costs appropriately. We expect the average player to, upon reaching the minimum level requirement, spend additional hours to obtain a Heart of Wood – but never hundreds of hours. Since the heroic goal is 20, we are lowering the expectation of number of Epic quests needed to earn the heart. You will find that Iconic and Epic hearts cost more because you are expected to earn most of it during gameplay, if you approach earning commendations as your priority reward for Sagas. We are still working on these values, and next Lamannia update they will be lower (though still open to adjustment up/down based on feedback)

Just a question. I like to do every quest in the game when i do a TR, and the same goes when i hit 20 and want to go till cap (28 atm). Last time i did all the quests in sagas on Epic Elite, ALL SAGAS, and still i did not get to 28, need to farm a few more quests/wilderness. So, if I go from 1 to level 28, doing every quest and saga in the game, ¿I will be able to Epic TR at 28 to 20 and then heroic TR to 1? ¿Or i won't have enough commendations for both? Remember, 1 time per saga on EE. If the answer is that i won't be able to do both TRs then the system is wrong, imho.

[nibel]

As of this writing, Update 20 will not remove the Heart of Wood from the Twelve barter NPC. Next steps will be discussed at a later date, but eventually commendations will be the preferred method of exchange – ideally this is preferred by most players, today that is not the case and we are acting accordingly.

Thanks for letting the hearts stay on the Twelve.

The major problem with saga rewards is that three sagas on the list requires epic Wheloon quests, that are level 26 base. On elite they are considered level 28 quests. And you can't even enter the quest if you are not level 24. This means that until you level up to 24, you are limited to the MotU saga. Even the Gianthold saga requires level 22 to be able to play on elite.

For people that want to Heroic TR at 20, this is a major drawback.

The ONLY way to avoid this drawback to the playerbase that like to TR at 20 is either giving us some sagas that can be run on base level 20-22 quests (like most Eberron epics), or make Commendations of Valor Bound to Account. Personally, I prefer the BtA option because that incentives people to keep their alts active. One of the major reasons for the outcry for the removal of Twelve hearts was because of BtC/BtA status on the currency.

• One thing, which players have already pointed out, is we are moving to a single game currency specifically for Hearts of Wood. New content, Eberron or FR, will not use Tokens of the Twelve, formerly “Epic Dungeon Tokens.” Originally intended as a hardcore option for the most Elite level cap builds – prior to U14 - the accessibility was made trivial for some when Epic levels were introduced. We left that unchecked and low priority for some time and there is an amazing disparity between players that can grind dozens in hours vs. the majority that takes days (20-30 hours) of gameplay to accomplish – we are balancing this system.

Does that also means that eventually you will make pre-U14 epic quests stop dropping token fragments and starts dropping Commendations of Valor?

Currently, you had to run 15~60 quests on any difficulty to get your 20 tokens to TR. You need to make the new currency match those numbers to avoid other major outcry. If currently 36 quests awards 5 saga rewards, you need to make those enough that one full elite run awards one heart, or two normal runs get you there (72 vs 60). Any benchmark higher than that is literally unnaceptable.

[Ykt]

You said you wanted to keep Heroic and Epic separate since you started it like that with MOTU ... why then are you introducing a currency that is both heroic and epic?

Heroic Heart of Wood should be earned through heroic play, Epic Heart of Wood through epic play.

[SirValentine]

You will make sure that those comms can be earned in a lot of other ways than just in the sagas otherwise as much as I liked the initial idea you can scrap it.

This can't be emphasized enough. Sagas only is total fail.

Right now, a F2P player can get tokens for hearts from daily challenges, and also from the F2P Epic Lords of Dust chain. Though I don't like it, I do understand if you don't have F2P folks as your priority. HOWEVER:

Right now, a VIP, you know, those Very Important customers of yours who pay you money every month, can get tokens for hearts from a huge variety of content, EVEN IF THEY DID NOT PURCHASE EXPANSIONS.

Comms only from Sagas, and Sagas that include EXPANSION content screws over your VIPs. You have...only 1, I think, Epic Saga that does not include Expansion content. Do you really expect your VIPs to do nothing but run every single Epic Gianthold quest over and over, not just for Heroic TR, but also for Iconic and Epic Reincarnation? VIPs MUST have more ways to get these Comms.

[jonqrandom]

please go /sign this.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/428611-Make-Commendations-of-Valor-drop-in-ALL-epics-by-u20-and-make-them-BtA?p=5142492#post5142492

[Pooklebunny]

Also, the subterranes could make a saga together with Devil Assault and Chronoscope for example. While Vision of Destruction is easy to complete now, Hound of Xoriat is still a challenge even for level 28 groups and needs organization and communication. It fails easily, even if its a level 18 quest. Combine these 3 raids and Devil Assault to 1 saga, its nice and easy to complete (if you got the right group for HoX), would make players happy (i hope, at least it would make me because im a raid nerd).
These changes would 1. revive these old epics and raids, 2. give people a chance to complete "easier" quests and 3. add more variety with relatively low effort from your - the dev's - side.

Nuts to that. I play this game in my spare time, and as I rarely have very much of that all at once, I pretty much always solo. Including a raid - or any non-soloable quest - in a saga excludes me completely from the mechanic. I am, in any case, not even slightly interested in running an arbitrary cluster of quests determined by "anyone who isn't me" in order to TR. TR'ing is what I do (it takes me a long while on each occasion, but my main is still on 14 lives and counting), and as a casual player with more money than time, I buy XP pots and all manner of other shiny things to make the levels go by quicker on lives I don't like. I'm happy to do this because nobody is making me do it. I don't have to spend money, but I do when it suits me and I don't when it doesn't. I'm not interested in playing sagas, but if my only other option is to buy a heart in the store I will just quit. At the moment, I spend points on fun things, or things that help me level faster. If I have to spend those points on a heart in the first place because the mechanic to obtain them excludes me as a casual, solo player... well, I'm not going to bother at all.

TL;DR: Do not make Sagas a requirement for TR'ing. I will not play them. I will not spend extra money to buy the heart. Instead I will spend the same amount of money somewhere else.

[AbyssalMage]

You said you wanted to keep Heroic and Epic separate since you started it like that with MOTU ... why then are you introducing a currency that is both heroic and epic?

Heroic Heart of Wood should be earned through heroic play, Epic Heart of Wood through epic play.

Well, they also said they would take care of VIP back when they went F2P. I think Turbine makes a lot of promises they have no intention of keeping. Sense I have been playing (U10) I have lost count of the number of promises they made. They then switched to their infamous "Soon(tm)" statement that only means, if it benefits the players expect it to be fixed by the next patch and if it benefits us, don't expect it to be fixed unless it somehow doesn't benefit us in a future release.

I understand wanting to go to a single currency. But that begs the question, why create a new currency (Comm's) when they had a previous one? They can't answer this one publicly because they have already lied about their intentions. A currency does what ever the authority wants it to do in case Turbine wasn't aware of it.

[Nascoe]

Thank You Glin for working on communication, It is greatly valued that you do. And a big thank you to Cordovan and Tolero for enduring the player rage during the weekend to follow what was being posted.

That HoW for Heroic TR will be (for now) available as is currently on Live is a VERY good and needed step.

As for the changes:

1. Yes, I like the idea of Sagas, and I do understand why they incorporate the newest content (both because its easier to add new stuff to a new system than to go through old quests to add them and because naturally Turbine wants to promote its newer content).
They do need a viable way to check on our completion status in another way than to go up the the NPC wherever that is in the worlds, and talk to them. A tab in the compendium would be a good way. I do like what people have offered, that the saga NPCs would be in the Hall of Heroes, because that would make them a natural way to start out your questing, look at overall progress, lvling up with trainers in a side room maybe, etc. Maybe add a way to get to our guild ships from there too?
As for the Hall of Heroes - It would be nice to have a message board up in there with things like congratulations to people finishing their completionist, guilds getting to lvl 80 etc, to give it a nice Hall of Fame feel as well and make it more lively inside.

What the Sagas are seriously lacking though is a more gripping story arc to bind them in. Most strings of quests have a really nice story to them, but Sagas feel too much like they are thrown together without that. And if we want Sagas to become what people look for when choosing what quests to do, it would be a great shame if it doesn't see sagas including the older quests, maybe entwining with the Favor system, where instead of a favor reward giver we do several quests for that house and the saga is a guideline towards gathering that house's favor - we would get favor, you can add nice rewards for reaching favor lvls where there are currently only "done, but we have no reward figured out" messages, and off course it could do nicely for us to work towards things like TR-ing if you want to tie that in with Sagas.
It should stay ONE of the ways to earn enough in game currency to get a Heart of Wood though, not the ONLY viable way.
So - 1. make the Sagas better, more rounded off and gripping stories
2. bring in Sagas with the older and very nice content already in the game

Making Commendations of Valor the target single currency is a good Idea. Do it over time, in phases, and replace old and now no longer much used things too in one go. It would need to be BtA though, because otherwise its far to limiting if one has any alts they run.

I play most of my time with some friends who play less than I do, and then with guildmates on 3 servers. I also play with my son a bit, but he never got above a couple of lvls (as a 10yo there is a lot to compete with DDO). I want to have 1-2 characters on those 3 servers that I will want to run epic content with, meaning that he/she has to have the gear for not being a burden on my party while doing so. These characters can earn CoV towards TR-ing. Other alts will serve to play with my son, or to play with my friends - these will be somewhere in heroic play and never see enough game time in epics to have a viable chance at getting together enough CoV for a Heroic True Heart. That is why having the Comms (and/or hearts) BtC will not work at all.

I am probably fine with having players earn Epic hearts as well as Iconic hearts from completing epic sagas, as its likely people will be playing them anyway to get to lvl 28, which they need for their ETR and ITR. But it really should be enough to do 2-4 sagas over the time to earn it, but to make it quality play time for all of us, we must have more sagas covering Ebberon only packs and not force players to go into FR if they want to ETR (I guess for ICR it makes some sense to stay there, apart for Bladeforged).

For HEROIC True Reincarnation to have to run EPIC Sagas - where is the logic in that? The character goes up from Lvl 1 to lvl 20 and then I want to change to a different class by doing a HTR. That means, that I should be able to work towards earning a Heroic HoW by doing HEROIC sagas, maybe a lot of them but still Heroic.
Because If you want me to do multiple EPIC sagas, that would in effect mean that I have to run quests of at least lvls 22-24 at to be able to TR (the lowest lvl epic sagas) - possibly multiple times. So how would one do that on a character that was not built to go above lvl 20? Ask guildies to let me pike it out while I am at lvl 20???. Or do you want to force us to play at least up to about lvl 24?

[Pandir]

Well that sounds better but i'll still be in wait and see mode, especially for the new values.

Oh and someone metioned here to add raids to sagas, please don't do that, that would just lock players like me out of the sagas, instead add commendation drops directly to epic raids.

And one more thing, i don't like this spread out people in quests by putting mandatory rewards into sagas tbh. I'll run the quests i enjoy if i feel too forced to run content i don't want to run or in a shape i don't want to that's probably a good way to get me to quit too.

[ReaperAlexEU]

I know I did not cover everything in one post.
We are still listening - even though I often see that people think we don't. There are a lot of opinions being expressed.

The topics I covered today were already in discussion during the design talks, some of the other details were not debated as much but will be now.

I can't answer on a change for bind type. Please be patient for the answer.

I can't tell you how long twelve tokens will be the "preferred method".
I would like to see it cleaned it up as a system, consolidate the items, get the right balance, etc. But not at the detriment of people enjoying the game. ...or excluding content.

Thank you for continuing to give us opinions, examples of how you play are also useful feedback tools. We'll keep working on the communication flow.

BtA seems to support quite a varied play style. you touch on not excluding content, by that i assume you mean quests. one of the beautiful things about this game is 2 different builds can make the quests feel different. this is why BtA is important as different builds are a massive part of the games content!

as for the quests themselves, i'd like to see all epic quests allow us to work towards goals such as TRing. i assume this will come in the form of sagas for ever epic quest pack, so maybe the tokens of the twelve will stay until you have enough saga NPC's rolled out?

a clean up of the system would be nice, i'm sure you've seen by now players frustration as each update releases a new type of item to collect with already overflowing bags. even worse when the new items don't fit into a bag! so if you can consolidate several item types together while maintaining balance then i think that will be a good step forwards.

[Kadriel]

Ok, great that tokens are staying for now.

For the future, here is what I think:

I hate tomb of tormented. Hate. I'm not kidding. Even though I have no problem with the other necro 3 quests, and cursed crypt gives great xp, I try my best not to have to run Tormented. I sometimes even pay people high value items to run it for me.

If suddenly someone made running tomb of tormented mandatory to the natural progress of the game, playing this game would start to be displesant for me. And I would quit.

I also hate, from a lesser degree, that swimming necro 2 quests. It really displease me to run that one.

I haven't run all the epic quests for now. But I might hate, say, Through a Mirror Darkly and say the house of husted blades. this means 5 out of 6 sagas. If I also hate, say, crucible, that 6 out of 6. This means I mandatory have to run quests I hate to progress in the game....

This would kill the entire game for me. Even if I do like all the other quests in the game, I'm still locked on progressing by the quests I hate. This means I hate this game as a whole, and not just 3 quests.

I could, of course, pay to skip those quests. But that makes as much sense as buying a bazzilion astral shards and getting daily dice xp until I get to 20. What is the point if you are not actually playing the game?

There is not enough diversity of sagas to make viable for them to be mandatory. There is currently, according to the wiki, 388 quests in this game, and hating 3 out of 388 means you hate all sagas. If sagas are mandatory for the game progress, this means hating the game.

[Clatterfist]

I don't have a problem with people earning their Hearts through outdated epic content, because it's fun, it encompasses a wide range of stories and environments and even playstyles, eg, challenges. Even if it's not optimal or particularly challenging, it has points of interest, such as the old epic loot which was designed at a time when progression was horizontal and often features unusual properties rather than simple number inflation.

I would have a problem with your proposed fix to this non-problem, because it cuts down the variety of content that I'll be likely to get groups to play, and risks driving away the free and premium players who help to fill out the groups that I play in across all the level ranges.

Furthermore, while I like sagas, all but one of the existing sagas are essentially for the same content. It's the "Running Around Eveningstar" sagas with five different contacts. I enjoy running around Eveningstar (it's beautiful and has lots of strong quests), but I also enjoy running around the Red Fens, and the Sands, and playing the Phiarlan Carnival. If you so strongly object to people playing this outdated content, why not change this into a wholly positive experience and just update more of that content, as you did with Gianthold? I love epic Gianthold, as I'm sure many people do.

[Coyopa]

A quest can overlap two or more sagas. In the situation where a quest is in multiple sagas, you will receive completion credit for each saga, for example, completing “A stay at the Inn” from the Update 16 Adventure Pack will reward credit in 3 Saga’s (b, c, e above). In this way, you can complete 5 sagas by playing 36 quests, and various combinations within that scenario if you prefer to skip some content.

The points you earn from completing a saga will vary based on the difficulty you completed them in. The number of commendations earned on an all elite run is 3-4 times that of an all normal run. In addition to difficulty, the higher level sagas tend to reward more commendations as well. Since the commendation is the currency, the important figure is the cost of the Hearts of Wood.

~ SNIP ~

What are we solving?
• The saga system serves to spread out repeat questing and reward for playing a variety of content and more challenging content. It does not penalize for playing out of order and you can be on track for multiple sagas simultaneously.
• One thing, which players have already pointed out, is we are moving to a single game currency specifically for Hearts of Wood. New content, Eberron or FR, will not use Tokens of the Twelve, formerly “Epic Dungeon Tokens.” Originally intended as a hardcore option for the most Elite level cap builds – prior to U14 - the accessibility was made trivial for some when Epic levels were introduced. We left that unchecked and low priority for some time and there is an amazing disparity between players that can grind dozens in hours vs. the majority that takes days (20-30 hours) of gameplay to accomplish – we are balancing this system.
• Along those lines, for over a year DDO has not been adding to the Twelve tokens reward system, quite the opposite, and we will continue to deprecate this system over time. As this is being written, the design team is discussing a few approaches to how this will be done.

~ SNIP ~

My responses:

Look at the sections I bolded ... <sarcasm>I can definitely see how you're going to encourage people to play a variety of content!</sarcasm> 36 quests comprise 5 sagas? Why the overlap? A saga is something that tells a story. In fact, definition #3 from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

a long detailed account

. So, shouldn't the quests involved in a saga be somehow related? One thing I noticed from looking at the quest lists from the various sagas is there really is no story telling involved. Just somebody decided "We want them to run these quests more. I know! Let's randomly package them together and call it sagas!".

As for the part in blue, why penalize the people who either chose not to exploit Shears of Fate or did not know about the exploit? So what if some people are able to grind 20 tokens in a few hours while others take days? I am one of those for whom it takes days and I enjoy the journey. I don't enjoy Devil Assault and rarely run it, but I very much enjoy the House D, P, and K epics. I used to run Claw of Vulkoor on my rogue until I ransacked the quest exp (and now I can run it FOREVER! YAY!). I solo stealth that, Bargain of Blood (in spite of your attempt to trap me in the lever room!), and Tide Turns. There are people who can grind out levels 1 to 20 in a matter of days and yet it takes me a month or more. Should we slow those people down who either have more time, are more dedicated to the leveling, or both? No, you say? So, why penalize the people who take longer to get their tokens? Who cares? Your players do not care that it takes some people longer to get their tokens than others. Just as your players do not care it takes some people longer to get back to 20 after TRing. This is the way the world works and people understand it - especially since it is a game and people play it to have fun. As long as your players are having fun, why mess with that?

As far as the saga rewards, I don't want to have to choose between guild renown, experience, tomes, or commendations. The reason why is simple: If I want to TR, then that means I MUST take commendations EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Don't force that on me. I was looking forward to running sagas eventually (not frequently, but here and there) for the extra renown I could get for my guild (or, sometimes, the extra experience). I suppose I am probably your target market for this change because I am more likely to purchase a heart of wood from the store, but that would only be a once a year purchase - *at most*. Currently, I can just TR when I want to and it is guaranteed I am going to purchase Sovereign Experience Elixirs, slayer boosts, gold seal hirelings and other stuff from the store. So, you're getting a couple hundred dollars a year from me on top of my subscription. Slow down my TRing and you'll be getting less. Scare enough people away from the game and you'll get zero - because if there is nobody in the game world but me and a handful of other people, why would I stay?

[Scraap]

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...eat-Idea/page2
Not the lam boards as as requested, but we did get into a bit of discussion regarding the merits of a less sagas-or-not approach.

[Deadlock]

I know, right? Put me and Teh_Troll in a room for 3 hours and we could solve all of DDO's design problems.

Two men enter! One man leaves!

[LordDunmore]

Have you considered this? Now that you MUST take valor in order to TR, you have effectively stopped most players from choosing any other rewards in the Saga list.

Running Sagas for the end rewards was nice. Forcing us to run them for valor is not nice.

Add another voice to BTA instead of BTC.

[Frogger1234]

As of this writing, Update 20 will not remove the Heart of Wood from the Twelve barter NPC. Next steps will be discussed at a later date, but eventually commendations will be the preferred method of exchange – ideally this is preferred by most players, today that is not the case and we are acting accordingly.

I pretty much daily see LFMs up for running Epic Devil Assault, Red Fens, VON, Sentinels or Phairlan Carnival. I run a lot of these myself, as well as Epic Sands. The proposal to leave Tokens and remove the Hearts of Wood from Lahar devalues all of these older Epic quests. (Seriously - 20 Tokens for an Augment? That will keep people running the old Epics?) It also misses an easy opportunity to keep old Epics relevant while you convert to a new currency system. If you want to convert to a newer currency, then include the change to the older Epics as well. Change drops of Tokens and Fragments to Commendations. Put a conversion of Tokens to Commendations as part of Lahar's barter box. Someone on vacation from the game will be seriously annoyed to come back to find out that they can just get Augments for their collected Tokens.

This would give you a unified new currency system, keep old Epics relevant, and take care of returning players.

[Ninety]

I'm going to be starting my 18th life this Friday (first one as a completionist as well I must say as well.) I plan on doing a lot of epic TRing as well, since TRing is about the most fun part of this game. however I would rather not run sagas over and over to get the ability to Epic TR.

I like the ability to run whatever quest I want, or if I want to grind epic tor over and over to get to 28 (and get some gear I want) at the same time, I should have the ability to do so.

[Flavilandile]

Ok, I'm coming in late and I didn't bother to read the whole thread, so bear with me if I just repeat what other said.

First off, thanks for finally answering...
Though it and the acknowledgement that there was a problem should have come way way way earlier.

Last week we updated Lamannia with a new barter option in place for earning Hearts of Wood in-game. While we would have been better if the information I posting here was released at the same time, we received feedback from the community on the most concerning issues that come with both introducing a new system and changing an old. Below, I intend to address a few facts on the system, cover some of the design thoughts and also address concerns that were highlighted over the weekend.


When Update 20 goes out to live servers, there will be a new commendation available through select Epic Sagas that will allow players to barter for Hearts of Wood. Initially these Epic Sagas will offer an option to claim a Commendation of Valor; in time we intend to add additional methods to obtain “Commendations of Valor.”

(a) Saga: The End of Eberron (Epic)
(b) Saga: Perils of Cormyr (Epic)
(c) Saga: The Planeswalker’s Path (Epic)
(d) Saga: Menace of the Underdark (Epic)
(e) Saga: Honor of the Huntsilvers (Epic)
(f) Saga: In the Wastes of Gianthold (Epic)

A quest can overlap two or more sagas. In the situation where a quest is in multiple sagas, you will receive completion credit for each saga, for example, completing “A stay at the Inn” from the Update 16 Adventure Pack will reward credit in 3 Saga’s (b, c, e above). In this way, you can complete 5 sagas by playing 36 quests, and various combinations within that scenario if you prefer to skip some content.

The points you earn from completing a saga will vary based on the difficulty you completed them in. The number of commendations earned on an all elite run is 3-4 times that of an all normal run. In addition to difficulty, the higher level sagas tend to reward more commendations as well. Since the commendation is the currency, the important figure is the cost of the Hearts of Wood.

You are not addressing the fact that we do not want this new unit of value ( lets call it Crappy BTC Thing for now ) to be tied to the Saga.
By the above paragraphs you are trying to justify the tie to the Sagas.

If you want to do something to alleviate our concerns make the Crappy BTC Thing drop in Chests in quest. ( end quest chest like the Tokens right now would be ideal )
You can also keep them as Saga Reward if you want.
The whole point being that people do not run sagas, we run quests, eventually quest chains when they are needed for flagging, Sagas are just a bonus for us in our gameplay, it's not an objective and never will be.
We play for the Fun, we don't want to have to do painful quests just so that we can get our Crappy BTC Things for our next life, as such we play quests where we are having fun.

Feedback received:
The prices on Lamannia are not final – inspired by the Lamannia feedback, the Heroic Heart of Wood will be greatly reduced from the price displayed in the bartershop today. We’ll be looking at your additional feedback and how players play through sagas, and adjust the costs appropriately. We expect the average player to, upon reaching the minimum level requirement, spend additional hours to obtain a Heart of Wood – but never hundreds of hours. Since the heroic goal is 20, we are lowering the expectation of number of Epic quests needed to earn the heart. You will find that Iconic and Epic hearts cost more because you are expected to earn most of it during gameplay, if you approach earning commendations as your priority reward for Sagas. We are still working on these values, and next Lamannia update they will be lower (though still open to adjustment up/down based on feedback)

So basically you're telling us that the values we saw are placeholder values. We all know the value of placeholder values when they appears in Lamannia.
They have almost always been the final values in game. It has been the case for many years now. This time we are not going to let it drop, we want exact values before it goes live.

Or if you go the way I suggested above ( drop in chests ), make the Crappy BTC Thing drop in End chests at the same rate as the Tokens, and make the Heroic True Heart Cost the same price as it costs right now.

Saga’s have been intermittently off since they were introduced this summer. We approached this system with much consideration for delivering something this important, so it is not taken lightly, and we are focused on making sure that Sagas remain available for players who have already started engaging with them, even before the commendations were “the new thing”.

What are we solving?
• The saga system serves to spread out repeat questing and reward for playing a variety of content and more challenging content. It does not penalize for playing out of order and you can be on track for multiple sagas simultaneously.
• One thing, which players have already pointed out, is we are moving to a single game currency specifically for Hearts of Wood. New content, Eberron or FR, will not use Tokens of the Twelve, formerly “Epic Dungeon Tokens.” Originally intended as a hardcore option for the most Elite level cap builds – prior to U14 - the accessibility was made trivial for some when Epic levels were introduced. We left that unchecked and low priority for some time and there is an amazing disparity between players that can grind dozens in hours vs. the majority that takes days (20-30 hours) of gameplay to accomplish – we are balancing this system.
• Along those lines, for over a year DDO has not been adding to the Twelve tokens reward system, quite the opposite, and we will continue to deprecate this system over time. As this is being written, the design team is discussing a few approaches to how this will be done.

The saga system is a bonus, we don't play the game running Sagas. We play it running quests and eventually quest chains when we need them for flagging.
Sagas are something new you added on top of quests and quest chains supposedly to make it more new players friendly, If there is new players in this almost 8 year old game. Old players (those that are interested in TR, as they have been doing it for a long time now) don't play saga, or use them just as an added bonus when they eventually complete one.

As stated above we don't really care about the name of the currency, as long as it drops in the same amount and in the same locations than the Tokens and it costs the same amount to get an Heroic Heart of Wood.

If you want to fully deprecate the tokens you need to address the Seal/Scroll/Shard problem,and the only way to address it is to open the scroll exchange to all the scrolls and to extend it to shards and seals.... Then you will be able to fully deprecate the Tokens and removed them... but if you try to get rid of them without addressing the Old Epic Items you will have another sit-in on Wayfinder really fast.

Feedback received:
As of this writing, Update 20 will not remove the Heart of Wood from the Twelve barter NPC. Next steps will be discussed at a later date, but eventually commendations will be the preferred method of exchange – ideally this is preferred by most players, today that is not the case and we are acting accordingly.
I do want to point out that the name of the True Druidic Heart of Wood is changing to Heroic Heart of Wood and all existing true-hearts will be updated to match.

As stated above, if you make the new currency BTA, make it drop in End quest chests at the same rate than the tokens, and if the Heroic Heart costs the same amount as with Tokens everybody will be happy. As long as any of the thing in the previous phrase is not there, you will have a problem with the community.

And as you now have stated that you are going to deprecate the Tokens Officially, you really need to come out and tell us what the plans are for the Seals/Shards/Scrolls Old Epic Items. ( and please NO RANDOM crappy powers on them )

[fredericko]

Glad Turbine listened to the feedback.

There are a couple of things worth considering.

If people don't run quests because of bad loot or xp that's what has to be fixed. I know Turbine is addressing this already.

The current token system allows you to progress towards your TR while greatly gaining xp. You can get enough tokens by simply running VON3, VON5-6, Wiz King, et al, once a day. Those quests are run by everyone and not just token farmers because they yield great xp / minute. The people I know who are running sagas do so because the vast majority of quests are good xp / minute, or give a chance for a (formerly, heh) high value item like a green scale (namely, the LoD - Darkening - City of Drow - Demonweb chain), or both, so even if there's a mediocre quest in between the xp reward pays off. The new system effectively removes xp rewards from sagas.

Another concern is that many chains that are now run solely for fun / gear, where efficiency is obviously a concern but not the top priority, will be run exclusively for comms / minute. I don't need to tell anyone what TRing and BB have done to the lvl 1-20 PUG scene. What the proposed changes might do is extending the TR LFM frenzy up to level 28.