Earning Hearts of Wood - post U20

[Spoonwelder]

In regards to Tokens of the Twelve: Tokens of the Twelve will continue to drop when Update 20 is released. One change will be that the Spinner of Shadows quest chain will no longer drop Tokens, since it is part of a Saga, so you'll get Commendations when you complete the Saga that these quests are a part of.

So a chain that has messed up mob CR's making it one of the toughest Epic quest chains even though it is only a L20 chain now has less of reason to run it......if you aren't a saga person anyway.

[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.

use case scenario:

i'm part way between a casual gamer and a power gamer. i play with both types and am an expert flower sniffer as well as a valued team member in harder content (no idea why, but they seem to enjoy having me along). it takes a very tempting goal to get me to put my nose on the grindstone and i am a LOT happier when there is a constant feeling of progress. the shroud was the first raid i farmed until the 20th reward was introduced, i now have a torc on my paly, yay.

i prefer to run a variety of quests over a single quest.

when i first tried epic quests before U14 i quite enjoyed the player created saga the PUGging scene created. a group would start for the easiest epic quest, then it would continue to progress through harder and harder quests as the PUG gelled together until it either stopped working or people ran out of time. this was an organic process and it just seemed to work well and feel right. my stash of tokens went from a measly handful from completing epics that were done just to see if i could to a nice stack that i could claim a reward for after farming the quests each day. the sense of progress and the fun actually saw me cycle alts through several such chains of quests in an evening. it got me playing more.

so, there is an old use case and something to strive for with the new system.

i understand the old system has been trivialized by the large increase in power our characters have, but here is a proposed change for you to consider.

reinstate epic tokens back to their former glory (ie in every single epic end chest). have the rewards related to character lvl vs quest lvl just as you do with renown to negate the trivialisation. have them as the main way to farm out hearts of all types. then give us the sagas as an optional reward just as they are doing for exp and renown today. this gives us more choices, we can use sagas to boost our exp gain, renown gain, the odd skill gain or heart gain depending on what is the most important to us while still making progress towards all goals. we can use sagas to knock off a few quests we might not have otherwise done for the extra reward waiting for us if we do. the power gamers can crunch the number and find the best set of quests to farm for their time, and the other players can just play through the content they feel comfortable in.

i like sagas as they are on live today, they have prompted me to run quests i would have otherwise skipped and it's made me play more. i like that i don't feel obliged to take a certain reward and would dearly like to keep that feeling of free choice. that choice would feel forced if it was the main way to earn a heart. change it to be an optional way to earn a heart just as it is for renown and exp and the saga system will meet its goal of persuading us to run a larger variety of quests and make us happy.

[Ovrad]

In regards to Tokens of the Twelve: Tokens of the Twelve will continue to drop when Update 20 is released.

Why put emphasis on U20? Will they still drop in the future or should we expect the drops to stop in U21 or so?

[voodoogroves]

I've said it before - no one is opposed to a new system. They are opposed to a new system with a host of constraints on their play style and enjoyment.

The user base has a few objectives requirements they'd like to see achieved, and lots of proposals that hit these - but I wouldn't be against other things Turbine could do to meet the basic objectives and this is why people keep coming up with the same things. Ultimately though, the goals are the same.

Do not dictate which content I have to run, I want to make that choice myself.
Sagas do not empower this, in fact they constrain your choices and behavior forcing you to run what you don't want to run. With tokens currently, you have a selection of things you could run - you could run the same single quest over and over again if you chose. There are a number of things that could facilitate this.
- Drop comms in place of tokens (and comm of heroism in place of greater tokens) - in general, make them drop in other places besides Sagas
- Provide a mechanism to convert from one to the other
- BTA allows this flexibility to farm on one character, then give heart to other (many do this today)
- etc.

Provide a way I can hit 20 and heroic TR relatively immediately.
I don't think people would be bugged if Epic or Iconic hearts had to be earned in epic play, because the cap there is 28.
- Comms drop in raids (and I like SirValentine's thought that heroic raids are included in this ... VoN/DQ get some but Abbot, VoD, HoX, ToD, Reaver get more) - allowing the possibility for a character to have what they need for a heart once they hit 20 if they concentrate on raiding on the way to cap.
- BTA, so you can farm on one character and give to another.
- etc.

But essentially, it still just boils down to
- Let me choose what content I run, don't force me to run stuff I don't like (and Sagas, being big, are nearly guaranteed to force someone to repeat things they don't like if they want/need multiple of the Saga rewards)
- Let me heroic TR at 20 near-immediately (and not once I've hit enough Sagas for the heart and I'm already 24 ... let me farm on someone else, or give me a way to get them if they must remain BTC during my heroic life)

[Drwaz99]

So a chain that has messed up mob CR's making it one of the toughest Epic quest chains even though it is only a L20 chain now has less of reason to run it......if you aren't a saga person anyway.

From most recent release notes:

The quests "The Lords of Dust" and "Servants of the Overlord" should now always have enemies of proper CR on all epic difficulties.

But it's been broken and fixed a couple times now, so take that as you will. It's still a backhanded they take one of the only FTP options of earning tokens and cease them dropping because they are "part of a saga".

[slarden]

I wanted to answer a couple of questions I've seen come up in the various threads in the past half a day or so. Just a reminder - this thread is the best place to give us your feedback right now, as it's got a lot of DDO team eyes on it.

In regards to Tokens of the Twelve: Tokens of the Twelve will continue to drop when Update 20 is released. One change will be that the Spinner of Shadows quest chain will no longer drop Tokens, since it is part of a Saga, so you'll get Commendations when you complete the Saga that these quests are a part of.

Challenges: Tokens of the Twelve will continue to be offered as a Challenge reward for Epic Cannith Challenges.

I feel bad for the free to play players that made point purchase decisions based on heroic play and continually TRing. It's going to be real hard to earn hearts without tokens dropping in those quests.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

I'm a premium player who has not made it to endgame yet, so perhaps my perspective is a little different from that of quite a few others.

I'm expecting quite a learning curve when I (finally) get to level 20 for the first time. I was looking forward to TRing my first character to reach level 20, once I accumulated the needed tokens. It's a carrot that seems relatively far away, but I'm OK with that.

I'm happy with the current system, in which I can learn how to run one quest at a time to accumulate ingredients needed to make a heroic TR heart. I'm not in any way invested in Sagas, the way the devs seem to be. I'm not thrilled with the idea that I might need to learn how to run a set of missions at level 20+, before getting my first(!) ingredient to make a token (or whatever name you choose), as that pushes the carrot noticeably further away for reasons that look arbitrary. I'm not keen about being pushed into running content that I may not like, to get a reward for which under the current system I don't need to do that. I'm even less happy to see that I might need to level up in the 20+ range for a while before finally getting to do a heroic TR.

I see this as a "mea culpa" moment. Somebody needs to swallow their ego and apologize, even if that apology never reaches the players' ears, for coming up with such a badly thought out and badly communicated idea. TR keeps the game alive for a lot of players and it's not a good idea to make the "gate" to do it onerous or unpleasant to pass through.

[rest]

I wanted to answer a couple of questions I've seen come up in the various threads in the past half a day or so. Just a reminder - this thread is the best place to give us your feedback right now, as it's got a lot of DDO team eyes on it.

In regards to Tokens of the Twelve: Tokens of the Twelve will continue to drop when Update 20 is released. One change will be that the Spinner of Shadows quest chain will no longer drop Tokens, since it is part of a Saga, so you'll get Commendations when you complete the Saga that these quests are a part of.

Challenges: Tokens of the Twelve will continue to be offered as a Challenge reward for Epic Cannith Challenges.

Wow. I guess you folks at Turbine really don't know what's going on any more than the players. That's comforting. Sort of.

[Ebondevil]

I wanted to answer a couple of questions I've seen come up in the various threads in the past half a day or so. Just a reminder - this thread is the best place to give us your feedback right now, as it's got a lot of DDO team eyes on it.

Thank you, more replies is good, even if it is just small updates

In regards to Tokens of the Twelve: Tokens of the Twelve will continue to drop when Update 20 is released.

Good, Thanks for clearing that up.

One change will be that the Spinner of Shadows quest chain will no longer drop Tokens, since it is part of a Saga, so you'll get Commendations when you complete the Saga that these quests are a part of.

Bad idea, you're taking a huge step in the direction that saga's are mandatory, instead of a bonus extra, while also undermining the currently available Saga rewards.

If you're going to remove the tokens, add the CoV's to the quests to replace them.

Challenges: Tokens of the Twelve will continue to be offered as a Challenge reward for Epic Cannith Challenges.

Good, would you like to add CoV's for Eveningstar challenge as well, the Random loot from them is a huge disappointment to me after the House C Challenge loot.


Still doesn't address the most important issues to my mind:
1) CoV's should be BtA!!!!!!!!! (I can't stress this enough!!!!)
2) CoV's need to be available from more content than a VERY limited subset of quests

[droid327]

In regards to Tokens of the Twelve: Tokens of the Twelve will continue to drop when Update 20 is released. One change will be that the Spinner of Shadows quest chain will no longer drop Tokens, since it is part of a Saga, so you'll get Commendations when you complete the Saga that these quests are a part of.

So, instead of being able to run a quest and get a reward, we now have to run a whole series of quests - including one raid-style bossfight - before we get a reward. Why cant you subdivide the rewards? Its ALWAYS better, design-wise, to increment rewards as much as possible. Why not have a bulk reward for completing the Saga, but ALSO have a small Comm reward for completing each quest, just like Tokens used to give?

Challenges: Tokens of the Twelve will continue to be offered as a Challenge reward for Epic Cannith Challenges.

Great, what are they even good for anymore? A few augments, and upgrading L20 Cannith gear? And if the Spinner chain no longer gives tokens, what does? Cannith, DA, and Carnival?

So basically, Tokens have been worn down to a way to earn Fear and Blindness Immunity augments by grinding Time is Money.

[BOgre]

I read a lot of posts tieing the problem with Sagas to the poor quality of FR content. I disagree with that. We asked for, we begged for, an FR expansion. The current FR quests are actually VERY cool. Some really really well designed quests, interesting story arcs, and gorgeous explorer areas. The problem with the FR content is the LOOT. Except for a small handful of nice items, the FR loot on the whole is terrible. Random effects are TERRIBLE. So the main reason to avoid FR content is not that it's bad, it's that there's virtually no incentive to play it. And forcing Saga completions in FR content isn't helping. Fix FR loot and you may have people return to playing the content. And that includes developing the Sschindy and Underdark explorers (as promised, then abandoned!!). More rares, more named items, more side quests.

Quit pushing Sagas and return to ACTUAL development.

[kned225]

I TR quite often, and have over 25 lives on my main.
so here's how I go about playing when reaching epic levels:

• I always load up a semi-completed ED, and go get all the explorers in the kings forest.
• I run the first ES chain, and go get all the explorers in Sschindlyn. I don't like the underdark, so I just skip that explorer zone.
• I sometimes run the 2nd ES chain, and go for the demonweb explorers. this happens about once every 2-3 lives.
• I run TTT once or twice, hoping for a shard to drop. it never does, but I keep trying.
• I usually run an EH Von3 a couple of times, and von 1&2 once.
• run some random epics from: Chrono, House P chain, LoD chain, House D chain.... never a complete chain though. just randomly questing. hence my disdain with the sagas idea.
• I run a shroud or 2. not because I need anything from it, my GS items have been set for many lives now. I just enjoy running it.
• I run a few (1-3) quests from: eGH and FR
• During all this, I continually run challenges. that is to say, I don't sit down and farm challenges for 3-4 hours, but I run a couple of them here and there. they add up quickly.

I run challenges because:
1. I really like running them, I think they are FUN. if you can come up with even more incentives to running them, I'm all for it. not enough players are running them at the moment. not enough for my liking at least.
2. At the moment challenges for a skilled group are one of the quickest ways for getting tokens.

you'll notice I placed that as the 2nd reason. that is because some of my guildies run eDA and we all just give them our tokens. that's a quicker than running challenges. why don't I do that? because eDA isn't fun. Challenges (to me) are fun. So while I don't mind running eDA a couple of times to help a guildy out, I'm not about to run it.

this by the way is why I don't like the idea of tying commendations to saga completions.
as you can see I usually don't complete ANY sagas during a life. I quest in a random fashion, I completely avoid quests I don't like, and I also enjoy running challenges.
under the current system, this is a quite acceptable, highly rewarding way to go about it.
under the new system, random questing and challenges would give me nothing. absolutely nothing. not a thing. not one (!!) thing.
and to top it all off, sagas would force me into running quests I would normally avoid. the only reason I'll be forced to run them, is because you the devs decided I should. and I mind it, I mind it a lot.

The problem is...you've got money ppl at turbine who read that and say "where's the money?"

Now i understand you may be vip or buy boxes, pots etc but those money guys dont care. They figure if you're willing to spend money on those things, you've got more to give. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong

[soloist12]

Simple solution turbine: go make interesting content, go make raids, stay out of the forgotten realms for a long while, ditch this CoV system, make handcrafted named loot again.

And viola, your game is back on track. I would re-instal the game and keep paying and recommend other friends to return.

Lately it's just more decisions made by non-gamers that somehow have the power to make them.

[Magil]

So, everyone seems to be really displeased with two particular things that I've noticed so far. The first is that these commendations will be BtC. Another is the sheer number of commendations you'll need to acquire to even gather a Heroic TR. I've read that you all seem to be lowering these numbers, but I wanted to toss in my own ideas anyway.

Commendations will be available through Sagas. Why not live up to the name of "Saga" in the first place? The current system has fragments of tokens, and then the tokens themselves. Why not do the same. The fragments could be "pages" of a "Saga of Valor" type book. X number of those books would then be used to trade in for the X Hearts of TR. You could simply toss the pages into non-saga quests, and make Saga completions the way to get the book. The majority who regularly TR are already used to either grinding out 20 tokens or 2000 fragments. Make Saga completions the means of getting the whole book, and everything else getting the pages.

Likewise, you could add more Sagas from the old content, for Heroic and Epic levels. We already have varying chains of quests. Why not make every pack have some sort of saga attached to it as well? For example, you could lump together The Kobold's New Ringleader along with Water Works and STK. You'd just scale the rewards down incredibly because they're low level, and pose little threat. What with Venn mentioning Shan-To-Kor as his dying words, you could have the harbor master as the NPC for the quest.

In any case, we already have a bit of epic content from Eberron as well. Only one pack actually is exclusively Eberron as far as Saga, and now it's a mandatory purchase. Why not give similar perks to older content as well? Why not have an update for say... The Sands? The Carnival? Red Fens? If you're going to ditch the tokens system, at least make the new one more viable to non-FR content as well. The older gear could use an upgrade as well, I think. You're already ditching the Scroll / Shard / Seal system as well, so why keep the older one on older content as well?

[Raoull]

I wanted to answer a couple of questions I've seen come up in the various threads in the past half a day or so. Just a reminder - this thread is the best place to give us your feedback right now, as it's got a lot of DDO team eyes on it.

In regards to Tokens of the Twelve: Tokens of the Twelve will continue to drop when Update 20 is released. One change will be that the Spinner of Shadows quest chain will no longer drop Tokens, since it is part of a Saga, so you'll get Commendations when you complete the Saga that these quests are a part of.

Challenges: Tokens of the Twelve will continue to be offered as a Challenge reward for Epic Cannith Challenges.

I think the goal of Turbine has just become explicit (even if implicitly so....).

They were told from On High, that Free to Players should no longer be able to TR. From here on out, Premium content will be required for TRing. (However, it is still possible to "buy" that premium content with favor reward TP.)

I seriously doubt that anyone that ever ventures anywhere near these forums has the authority to countermand that decision. It will stick.

And personally.... I have no problem with that. There is a huge amount of game out there for free. TRing doesn't have to be a part of that (although with favor grinding, it still can be). They get their money's worth.

[patang01]

I wanted to answer a couple of questions I've seen come up in the various threads in the past half a day or so. Just a reminder - this thread is the best place to give us your feedback right now, as it's got a lot of DDO team eyes on it.

In regards to Tokens of the Twelve: Tokens of the Twelve will continue to drop when Update 20 is released. One change will be that the Spinner of Shadows quest chain will no longer drop Tokens, since it is part of a Saga, so you'll get Commendations when you complete the Saga that these quests are a part of.

Challenges: Tokens of the Twelve will continue to be offered as a Challenge reward for Epic Cannith Challenges.

Valor in the end of sagas - not good enough.

[Dandonk]

Challenges: Tokens of the Twelve will continue to be offered as a Challenge reward for Epic Cannith Challenges.

Umm, OK? You are aware that Tokens, when the change finally goes through and Hearts can nolonger be purchased with them, will be next to pointless? It's not the dropping of tokens that's a problem, it's the devaluation of them.

[Chai]

The token system was fine for buying TR hearts. What could have been accomplished if they used those people hours starting something brand new like another raid or more quest content, rather than revamping something already in place and working? This is the second time now that resources have been allocated to changing how the token system works since it was rolled out in 2009. Instead of replacing already working systems, start enhancing the quality of the game by creating new things IN ADDITION TO rather than REPLACING the old.

DDO is not a clone MMO where the old content is invalidated the minute a new expansion is released. Theres no reason to invalidate the old content by taking reasons for running it away from the players. If anything needs to be changed about the old content, its the modernization of the loot acquired in said content. Give us MORE reasons to run the older stuff, not LESS. Requiring saga completion to earn TRs and making that system replace the token system gives us less reason to run the older content.

[Drwaz99]

I wanted to answer a couple of questions I've seen come up in the various threads in the past half a day or so. Just a reminder - this thread is the best place to give us your feedback right now, as it's got a lot of DDO team eyes on it.

In regards to Tokens of the Twelve: Tokens of the Twelve will continue to drop when Update 20 is released. One change will be that the Spinner of Shadows quest chain will no longer drop Tokens, since it is part of a Saga, so you'll get Commendations when you complete the Saga that these quests are a part of.

Challenges: Tokens of the Twelve will continue to be offered as a Challenge reward for Epic Cannith Challenges.

Man Jerry, I know you the messenger, but what is going on here? I can tell that Glin and company don't read a majority of forums. Take that for what is worth, fine. But they say they are listening, but what are they listening to? What we are saying and what they are telling us they are hearing has a MASSIVE divide between them.

Either Glin, Rowan and Fernando just don't care behind closed doors about what we say. Or,
They aren't being given the correct message.

It's tough to justify that they aren't being given the message when all they have to do is read the forums.

The more I take time to read what they have written, discuses them with friends in-game and out, the message I'm see more clearly is as such:

"Eventually (SOON) it's going to be our way or the highway in regards to your concerns about Reincarnation and HoW acquiring."

And scores of people are choosing the HIGHWAY!

This isn't just about BTC v BTA. Or Tokens disappearing. It's about how important decisions regarding this game are being made. It boggles my mind.

Also the most important question that keeps coming up is:

Sagas a going be obviously be the dominant vehicle to acquiring COV's. That's become obvious. You say their functionality is of high importance, yet they have been down more often than not since their introduction. What plans are in place, if any, to accommodate if a quest requires closure or another exploit occurs. With possibility of multiple Saga's being shut down because of ONE quest closure (some quests are out for months at a time!), this is of utmost importance but no one can say anything other than, "We know". Not acceptable.

[Antiguo]

Challenges: Tokens of the Twelve will continue to be offered as a Challenge reward for Epic Cannith Challenges.

So what?

It's not like they will have any value in the u20.1 or u20.2 anyway.

Answer the important questions instead: BtC or BtA?; more sagas?; more ways to earn valor comms that doesnt force people to run only the present sagas?