Earning Hearts of Wood - post U20

[Drwaz99]

First impression:

Why is it so hard to give us the numbers now that you intend to add to the Lamannia's next update? What are the numbers you say are better but are reluctant to show? All of this could have been avoided if you told us that the first time around. But your not telling us again.

Actually your not giving us any concrete answers, but rather saying that you may adjust them at a later time depending on "feedback". All your doing is passing the buck to a later date, with the exception of the news tokens aren't going to be removed. To be honest your not going to get much more feedback by saying you'll tell us later, or we'll tell you when we roll it out. All you going to get it more frustration and resistance to your plan (or lack thereof). Ambiguity was a major part of the original problem and all you doing is continuing with that trend.

Your going to add methods of acquiring COV's. You have a history of saying this and then "forgetting" or moving to another project. What makes this any different? This has been repeated for years. There are many half completed systems, Cannith Crafting (heck, all the crafting sans Greensteel). You never adjusted Collectable Turn-ins, which I might add are so high that I have never used them once. There are no new Epic Destinies - which was also said would be added in a reasonable amount of time after MOtU.

Being forced to run Saga's for COV's is like trying to put a square peg into a round hole. This whole idea should be placed on hold until there is more availability of COV's. As such I will not spend money on woods in the store because you are forcing me to do something I do not wish to do in order to achieve them. The flexibility of tokens allowed me to play content I enjoyed (and you know, have fun! Shocker!). You mention that your going to wait to see how people play thru sagas before finalizing Wood prices, yet you realize that only a handful of players will spend the hours on the Preview Server and do this. So in essence your not going to really adjust them until after U20's pushed live. So prices are going to be at a time to be determined. As expected. Disappointing.

Make COV's bound to account. You sold me a shared bank and then made everything BTC. That one burns.

Lowering the required amount is the tip of the iceberg. And in my opinion you wrote a lot of words again but said relatively little. You severed my trust, yes with just this preview to an Update. It's going to take a lot of good faith efforts and follow thru to regain that trust. It's going to have to be much better than you've done in the past.

[Antiguo]

To be fair he did say that in time they would add more ways to get comms. The question of course is when will they get around to that and what other ways will that be?

They will put them in the next Monster manual, 3 comms for killing 7500 pit fiends, and in the daily dice (only to remove them a bit later).

[JOTMON]

So the years of collecting Epic Tokens was a waste of time because you planned all along to get rid of them instead of offering new augments and choices for the tokens to be traded in for.
seems like a bug FU to those that had squirreled these away in anticipation of future augments.

The saga system is a lie.
The Saga system was supposed to add new fun things to players, not a bait and switch system... "hey look new commedations for TR's isnt that great.. Tokens.. what tokens..."

Its been down more than its been up, errors in quests you complete vs recognition on the Saga turn in list, so you have to remember which ones you've done and not repeat crucible 3 times befor finding out it is not crucible you are missing it is cabal.
Anytime we repeat quest runs within the saga that do not complete the chain are wasted quest runs.
Forcing players to run complete sagas repeatedly to get insignificant amounts of commedations .

Where are the TR options with commedations for those on Eberron that don't require regrinding 1 saga chain in GH or being forced into the Epic expansions to TR heroic lives.
Why are you killing historic epic raids in favor of a few selective chains.

Are you replacing existing Epic quests that currently offer Tokens with commedations? or are you wanting them to die

[Teh_Troll]

The problem with tokens or comms dropping in every epic quest is that powergamers will just find the "best" comm/minute quest and farm the hell out of it. Now, I'm not saying that's wrong, but maybe that's not Turbine's design goal. They want people playing a wide variety of quests.... So they are using the saga system to promote that.. It could work, but they need more sagas... They have more time now to add a dozen more sagas into the mix by Update 21, and then it may not be too bad.

They definitely need to go BtA though... We should be able to farm comms on our epic characters, and not be forced to run epic content on a character that you just want to TR at 20.

Problem = feature.

[Djjinni]

For the other people that still feel like bi**hing and moaning, you should have realized that this game was going down this P2W avenue long ago. I do not agree with the P2W Turbine is promoting, but it has been evident for a long while.

First off, overall I agree with what you are saying in that post.. until you get to this P2W part.


There is a difference between Paying to gain an advantage over other players.. and being forced to pay above and beyond to continue playing it as you wish :/

Some people choose to replay Heroic levels. Whether for player-power or just they dislike Epics, that is their *choice*. Forcing them to buy stones to continue to do this (regardless of them spending money on packs/VIP/consumables etc) is a purely negative change.

Their current solution will suit most players for now.. but the last few parts of Glin's post don't fill me with confidence that these changes won't be again messed with negatively very soon :P

[mudfud]

The problem with tokens or comms dropping in every epic quest is that powergamers will just find the "best" comm/minute quest and farm the hell out of it. Now, I'm not saying that's wrong, but maybe that's not Turbine's design goal. They want people playing a wide variety of quests.... So they are using the saga system to promote that.. It could work, but they need more sagas... They have more time now to add a dozen more sagas into the mix by Update 21, and then it may not be too bad.

They definitely need to go BtA though... We should be able to farm comms on our epic characters, and not be forced to run epic content on a character that you just want to TR at 20.

I should be able to run any quest I want not what turbine wants. Whether I'm a powergamer or not. Nobody should be forced to do a quest or series because that is what they need to TR.
Sure turbine wants us to run different epics for whatever reason, but by forcing us to do them to get something is not the way to go about getting us to do it.

[Stretchicus]

Thanks for the response to the outcry over this Glin, communication is good.

Having said that, some questions/comments regarding specific points;

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.

Thank you. This is one of the issues addressed, and concrete numbers would help to assuage the outrage at the ludicrously high markers previously set. BTC comms is still a no-no though, is anything changing with regards to this?

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.

So how many hours do you feel is a reasonable amount?
If you're going to lower the timer, can we please have a timescale for "additional hours" that reflects that?
Can we get a guarantee against this number becoming inflated over time, or against the goalposts being moved by large amounts once you've got a value settled for live?

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)

You're expecting everyone to take V-comm for rewards every time?
Will the Heroic heart be usable for TRing whilst between levels 20 and 28, in order to prevent anyone who wants to TR having to farm out multiple hearts in one life?

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”.

So you won't put sagas in live with commendations unless you are 100% sure they won't be exploited, broken, or otherwise abused. Good, this should go without saying.

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.

Ok, I can understand some of the reasoning behind this. Content is not being run at an even spread, Eveningstar and FR is being largely ignored no matter how much Monty Haul goes into the loot out there.
Why not make it easier for us to get from airship to FR by finishing off the airship buffs, which stop at lesser for some unknown reason, and adding in a Gatekeeper/Planeswalker NPC for us to hire? Not having to run through the harbour/rely on a one use per hour item to get there means more accessibility and less of a psychological obstacle to FR.

If you're going for a single currency, please add it in a form where it doesn't take up inventory space, like astral shards. Already FAR too many large ingredient bags on my 7th lifer, to the point where I started TRing bank toons to use their caches for storage too.

A lot of players don't want you to remove tokens PERIOD. Sweeten the deal for us a little.

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.

Thank you for listening, at least part of the way. Compromise might keep more players than out and out rebuttal

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 we work to get Reincarnation out to Lamannia, we will also make initial updates to the bartershops with Hearts of Wood.

So the name, and JUST the name, none of the other functionality is (purposefully) changing?

I realize there are more topics to cover on this subject and we aim to address this here, on the Lamannia forums, during development.

Can we get a weekly/biweekly update from the devs on progress with ALL reincarnation issues?


Edit: I need to type faster.. 3 pages in 20 minutes should be a good indication of how important an issue this is though.

[Deadlock]

The problem with tokens or comms dropping in every epic quest is that powergamers will just find the "best" comm/minute quest and farm the hell out of it. Now, I'm not saying that's wrong, but maybe that's not Turbine's design goal. They want people playing a wide variety of quests.... So they are using the saga system to promote that.. It could work, but they need more sagas... They have more time now to add a dozen more sagas into the mix by Update 21, and then it may not be too bad.

They definitely need to go BtA though... We should be able to farm comms on our epic characters, and not be forced to run epic content on a character that you just want to TR at 20.

I can already tell you how long it takes to earn a True Elite Saga reward for every Saga. Before this goes live, I'll be able to tell you how long it takes on every difficulty. As soon as we have the Commendations of Valor reward numbers I'll be able to tell you the Commendations of Valor/minute ratio for all of the above.

How is one type of farming any better than another?

Meanwhile, I'll be doing another runabout to have all Saga True Elite rewards ready to claim for the second this goes live. Did it once for my own amusement to drink a guild renown pot and claim all the renown

(Guild: ): Your guild has earned 44,934 renown. (34,500 base + 10,434 medium guild bonus!)

Was fun claiming that x6. So now I'll just tee up all the Saga rewards again.

You're not really making life any more difficult for those on a mission to Heroic, Iconic or Epic TR repeatedly. You're making life more difficult for the more typical player who doesn't want to spend every single minute online working exclusively on progress towards their next TR who might want to do some random stuff just for the fun of it.

[EllisDee37]

Glin, what are you guys doing? Sagas are a terrible thing to pin the most vital aspect of your game's health to. The only reliable thing about sagas are that they're unreliable. Heroic TR is what's keeping your game going. You mess with this at the game's peril.

BTC is a non-starter. The currency to purchase hearts needs to be BTA for a variety of reasons.

The moment you remove hearts from the 12 (at a later date) you will utterly destroy the last remaining value of cannith challenges.

The irony is that your new saga system for hearts would reduce the number of quests I run for tokens. Currently what I do is run circuits of sentinels (skipping black loch, which doesn't drop tokens), red fens, von, lod and da, plus challenges, PLUS RAIDS ON GUILD RAID NIGHTS. (eADQ, eVON, eChrono.) Do you really think it's a wise move to further devalue raids? They are the social centerpiece of many guilds: Guild Raid Night. It's easy to justify running an epic raid you otherwise need nothing from if you at least get a token out of it.

There is pretty much nothing I like about this new idea. Sadly, it's clear you're forcing it through, completely ignoring player feedback. Nothing in your proposal is changing at all, you are dead set on implementing this exactly as already described. Such a shame.

If your motivation is to sell adventure packs

It's clearly not, as this system significantly reduces the appeal of buying Carnival, Red Fens, Sentinels, and Devil Assault, while not adding to the value of any packs except Gianthold, which is already the most highly valued pack now despite not even providing epic tokens.

[rakhtal]

• 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.

(emphasis mine)

Eveningstar quests with just token gianthold is not variety. If you really wanted variety you would create sagas for more eberron quests.

Even then I would not like sagas4tr system but it would be better.

Still if someone wants to farm they will run N(number depending on saga) quests over and over instead of one. Not a big difference.

[Saravis]

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 take it then that tokens will continue to drop and will not be removed from the game?

I am curious what these next steps are, I hope you have plans of providing a more smooth transition that doesn't result in another angry mob.

[arkonas]

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.

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)

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.


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 we work to get Reincarnation out to Lamannia, we will also make initial updates to the bartershops with Hearts of Wood.

I realize there are more topics to cover on this subject and we aim to address this here, on the Lamannia forums, during development.

ok glin since you're still set on sagas you need MORE sagas. currently you're forcing people to still buy the expansions to tr even when you phase the other stuff out. no one wants to run gh however many times to get it. so make this happen. MORE SAGAS involving the other epics.

[Drwaz99]

Also - what are the plans should Sagas be shut down for extended amount of time. Like they were for a month + after U19? Is there even one? That would directly shut off the path to woods entirely.

[Cauthey_No_CCInfo]

Thank you, Producer Glin. I appreciate that you have taken the time to review our feedback today (in what I imagine to likely have been a grueling day full of meetings).

However, I am still discouraged that it took a protest on Wayfinder and some press through gaming blogs to provoke the engagement. I realize that timing may have been part to do with this. Nonetheless, your community has come to it where they feel they must take drastic actions to get your attention.

I hope that you will very carefully note the temperature of your customers here, and will make adjustments to management to make sure that you are meeting your customers needs. This is a great game - those that play it really love it. However, I feel I speak for a significant part of the community when I say that we just do not agree with some of the directions and agendas that you take. I understand you are under pressure to make the game profitable. But, I believe that if you focus on "what you can do for your players" instead of "what can we get out of our players," you will likely find that you'll have more players, and they will be willing to give to you a lot more freely. Then, your challenges for maintaining profitability take care of themselves.

[Ebondevil]

+15% Bonus to Commendations of Valour drops, coming to a DDO Bonus Day near you Soon™

[Trillea]

Turbine has a design goal?

First notice, they are good at hiding it indeed.

No they are not, their goal is BLATANTLY obvious.

Turbine makes their money by logins. The more you login over time, the more they get funded. TRing quickly highly reduces the number of logins you do per life, so in order to offset that they have to monetize TRing more directly. Therefore they make the process more drawn out if you are TRing for free. Forcing you to get BtC items that are only available after hitting 20 will make it so that if you want to do it right at 20, you have to pay. So either way, they win - TR at 20, you paid TP. TR at 23 or 24 after running sagas, they win because of the extra logins.

This is a purely greed-driven decision and if they make the comms BTA instead of BTC I would be immensely astonished. I am calling you out, Turbine. Prove me wrong.

[SirValentine]

the Heroic Heart of Wood will be greatly reduced from the price displayed in the bartershop today.

Good.

As of this writing, Update 20 will not remove the Heart of Wood from the Twelve barter NPC.

Better.

eventually commendations will be the preferred method of exchange

That's rather imprecisely worded. Did you mean to say: "eventually we will remove the Heart of Wood from the Twelve barter NPC"? And if so, why not just say that ? And why would you ever want to do that? You realize that's the single biggest (though not only) sore point people have been giving you feedback on, right?

This game has a long...tradition...of half-implementing systems, then abandoning them and coming up with something new. Which is kind of neat, actually. It's got a messy, organic complexity to it. So I really don't approve of the mindset that, not only do current designers not use all the existing in-game systems, but instead of co-existing, actively seek out to destroy the work of those that came before.

[slarden]

My only suggestion is that before you remove the token of the twelve option, there should be a way to get the new coms from older epic content as well. The coms shouldn't be limited to running a small handful of quests.

[Qhualor]

I really would like Turbine to go ahead and define their target market group. I keep having a tough time deciphering if I am still in it.

if you are casual or not a power gamer than you are in it. they are trying to close the gap and put everyone on the same playing field.

[Lonnbeimnech]

Phasing out the old epic stuff sounds like a good idea, but put in something that lets us phase it out of our inventory as well. What are we supposed to do with the old tokens?